These bots do not like Star Wars

[CharonY]

So apparently there was a huge row regarding the last Star Wars movie (I have not seen it and do not follow social media). Now apparently someone looked into it and found that at least half of the vocal voices against the movie were most likely trolls and quite a few bots. Half of the bots were likely Russian.

Quote

“Overall, 50.9 percent of those tweeting negatively was likely politically motivated or not even human,” Bay wrote. He said they appeared to be using the debate around “The Last Jedi”

“to propagate political messages supporting extreme right-wing causes and the discrimination of gender, race or sexuality.”

“A number of these users appear to be Russian trolls,” Bay added in the paper, called “Weaponizing the Haters: The Last Jedi and the strategic politicization of pop culture through social media manipulation.”

From the paper itself:

Quote

Based on the findingsin the present study, it is not fair to generalize and paint all of the The Last Jedi detractors as alt-right activists, racists or misogynists. However, the findings above show that a majority of the negatively-poised users included in the study doexpress such sentiments, either in The Last Jedi-related tweets or in other tweets on their accounts. These identity-based political values combine with traditional party politics and issue-based politics to represent a politicization of Star Wars critique which is found in more than half of the negative accounts in this study.  

 

Somewhat funny, somewhat sad. The future of discourse in the age of social media continues to be an interesting experiment.

Edited October 4, 2018 by CharonY

[iNow]

Same thing is happening in our politics. We’re not as far apart as it seems.

It is, however, time to stop calling them bots and trolls and instead call them by the much more accurate term “information terrorists.”

https://www.wired.com/story/information-terrorists-trying-to-reshape-america/

[Phi for All]

Same thing happens here. A few shitty comments dropped inappropriately by someone pretending to be a teenager with questions, and it generates pages of wasted debate. They ARE information terrorists, and being accurately informed these days is becoming more an issue of security.

Forget the Mexico wall, we need a firewall to protect us from the Russian Federation.

[StringJunky]

10 minutes ago, Phi for All said:

Forget the Mexico wall, we need a firewall to protect us from the Russian Federation.

You might find this BBC article interesting on the way Europe is starting to deal with Russia:

Quote

Transparency - the tool to counter Russia

When Theresa May addressed MPs on 5 September - revealing the identities of two Russian agents suspected of the Salisbury poisoning - she said the UK and its allies would step up their collective efforts against the country's military intelligence agency, known as the GRU.

In particular, she promised to deploy what she called "the full range of tools from across our national security apparatus in order to counter the threat posed by the GRU."

Well, we now know what she means.

And the biggest tool in her box is what officials call the shining light of transparency.

The revelations about how the British and Dutch security agencies disrupted the operations of the GRU are astonishing in their detail and their openness.

This is not what secretive intelligence agencies normally do.

But the willingness of both countries to be so candid illustrates how determined both they and some other western governments are to try to push back against what they see as a concerted pattern of Russian aggression.

"I imagine Mr Putin is shouting at one or two people right now," a cheerful British official told me.

Read more>>  https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-45751173

 

Edited October 4, 2018 by StringJunky

[CharonY]

29 minutes ago, Phi for All said:

Same thing happens here. A few shitty comments dropped inappropriately by someone pretending to be a teenager with questions, and it generates pages of wasted debate. They ARE information terrorists, and being accurately informed these days is becoming more an issue of security.

Forget the Mexico wall, we need a firewall to protect us from the Russian Federation.

It should be noted that Russia is not the only player. There are plenty of internal groups weaponizing social media. After all, Steve Bannon was quite open in describing the overall strategy, with additional insights gleamed from the Cambridge Analytica situation. And talking about Europe there is the same thing. In Germany the far right party has been pushing propaganda and fraudulent news via twitter and facebook.

[LaurieAG]

I remember a recent discussion in Australia where it was argued that our external agencies don't need special laws to get the goods on anybody internally because an external agency just has to hire another external agency, criminal or otherwise, to get access to the information they need!

Surely it is becoming very obvious that corruption won the cold war and not any particular ideology.

[Sensei]

11 hours ago, CharonY said:

Now apparently someone looked into it and found that at least half of the vocal voices against the movie were most likely trolls and quite a few bots. Half of the bots were likely Russian.

If it is true, it's just to test of software whether it'll be able to make influence, and whether it'll be detected..

I would make database of IP of such bots, and when somebody comes to e.g. Google, YouTube, MSN, BBC, CNN (it requires cooperation between IT and media companies), there would be showed message on the top of page, that his/her IP was used to send such messages (with list of these messages with links and dates). These people might be unaware that hackers installed malware software on their machines, and are writing and spreading comments around the Internet, using their IP. It should encourage these people to format their HDD and install fresh new OS (without malware anymore, at least for some time). This is to make people aware they're part of botnet, so they will be able to do something with it..

 

@iNow

Disagree. It would degrade value of the second word. Search engine bots would treat them as one.

There is name for it: disinformator.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disinformation

It has even Russian origin.

 

They're called "bots", because somebody seating in control room, is controlling entire network of intercepted hacked computers ("botnet"). Such person is telling his/her bots what to spread, when to spread it, on which portals, and they are starting working at the right moment automatically. Such software can be also installed on intercepted routers, WiFi modems and smartphones.

Somebody might pretend me, somewhere, right now. And writing compromising me words "on my behalf" (because it has the same IP).

 

Edited October 5, 2018 by Sensei

[iNow]

4 hours ago, Sensei said:

Disagree. It would degrade value of the second word.

If it's deployed by a human with the intent of sowing discord and terror, then it seems to apply just fine. The idea of information terrorism is supplemental to disinformation, not mutually exclusive. That said, you raise a good point that it must be used appropriately and hyperbole avoided. We certainly agree about that.