David Corn posted a link to Tonya Riley's article in Mother Jones
I had recently experienced something that stuck with me enough that I had a screenshot and outline waiting in case I got around to writing about it. I just finished it up because I wanted it to be my response to his tweet. Here it is - how we can all do something about the problem that Tonya Riley addresses in her article:
An interesting thing happened on Twitter. The sad news is that it's a pattern I identified about fourteen years ago and can see from a mile away now. Yet, no matter how many times I point it out, most people don't seem to notice or believe it matters enough to watch for and report it.
Hillary tweeted, someone responded, and I replied to him. Here it is:
I checked in after my tweet had received about 90 likes, about 30 of them from people who didn't notice that I was mocking 3YearLetterman and *liked* my comment because they thought it was directed at Hillary. Most of those 30 had fewer than 100 (some fewer than 10) followers and most of them hadn't tweeted or liked a tweet in at least six months. Some had no visible Twitter activity in years.
My guess is that most of the 30 are connected - either the same person with multiple accounts or a trolling group.
I watched one woman on a site that no long exists for a couple of years. She would post a lie, or an insult, and immediately have a flock of *likes* on that lie or insult, from people that never did anything other than *like* her lies and insults and tell her how right and wonderful she was. I baited her at times, just to watch because it was obvious and hilarious, and I could imagine her signing in and out of her multiple accounts to like herself. But, when Barack Obama was running for President the first time, and she suddenly had young, black friends who spoke in what was obviously this old white woman trying to sound young and black, it angered me. Her young, black friends started out being pro Obama and collected some Obama supporters as followers. And then suddenly they all discovered horrible things about him that nobody but them knew. And all of her other imaginary friends liked their lies about Barack Obama and added a few of their own.
When a bunch of people have a bunch of trolls, and follow each other around they can make it look like people who spread lies (Trump, Sanders, etc) have a lot of followers who believe those lies. It spreads exponentially, like a wildfire. I see it on Twitter a lot, and sometimes on the accounts of Facebook friends who post public. They disrupt every chance they get, take conversations off topic, and create misconceptions.
Hope everyone will watch for them, call them out, and block them.
How Bots Are Hijacking the Political Conversation Just Before the Election
40 percent of “MAGA” tweets came from automated accounts.
I had recently experienced something that stuck with me enough that I had a screenshot and outline waiting in case I got around to writing about it. I just finished it up because I wanted it to be my response to his tweet. Here it is - how we can all do something about the problem that Tonya Riley addresses in her article:
An interesting thing happened on Twitter. The sad news is that it's a pattern I identified about fourteen years ago and can see from a mile away now. Yet, no matter how many times I point it out, most people don't seem to notice or believe it matters enough to watch for and report it.
Hillary tweeted, someone responded, and I replied to him. Here it is:
I checked in after my tweet had received about 90 likes, about 30 of them from people who didn't notice that I was mocking 3YearLetterman and *liked* my comment because they thought it was directed at Hillary. Most of those 30 had fewer than 100 (some fewer than 10) followers and most of them hadn't tweeted or liked a tweet in at least six months. Some had no visible Twitter activity in years.
My guess is that most of the 30 are connected - either the same person with multiple accounts or a trolling group.
I watched one woman on a site that no long exists for a couple of years. She would post a lie, or an insult, and immediately have a flock of *likes* on that lie or insult, from people that never did anything other than *like* her lies and insults and tell her how right and wonderful she was. I baited her at times, just to watch because it was obvious and hilarious, and I could imagine her signing in and out of her multiple accounts to like herself. But, when Barack Obama was running for President the first time, and she suddenly had young, black friends who spoke in what was obviously this old white woman trying to sound young and black, it angered me. Her young, black friends started out being pro Obama and collected some Obama supporters as followers. And then suddenly they all discovered horrible things about him that nobody but them knew. And all of her other imaginary friends liked their lies about Barack Obama and added a few of their own.
When a bunch of people have a bunch of trolls, and follow each other around they can make it look like people who spread lies (Trump, Sanders, etc) have a lot of followers who believe those lies. It spreads exponentially, like a wildfire. I see it on Twitter a lot, and sometimes on the accounts of Facebook friends who post public. They disrupt every chance they get, take conversations off topic, and create misconceptions.
Hope everyone will watch for them, call them out, and block them.
No comments:
Post a Comment