I Suspect Much Higher
Twitter. Entertaining as it is, it may destroy us. First, you have Trump’s tweets. And last, you have Trump’s tweets.
And then the bots. This study shows that the Coronavirus is causing more than double the amount of bot activity than anything else ever has. It is used to spread conspiracy theories which leads to uncertainty and that divides us even more.
Carnegie Mellon University researchers have discovered that much of the discussion around the pandemic and stay-at-home orders is being fueled by misinformation campaigns that use convincing bots.
To analyze bot activity around the pandemic, CMU researchers since January have collected more than 200 million tweets discussing coronavirus or COVID-19. Of the top 50 influential retweeters, 82% are bots, they found. Of the top 1,000 retweeters, 62% are bots.
The the rightwing wants to talk about fake news?
Chatter away at the robots, Chucky.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,”
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”New evidence shows the CDC has been ‘distorting’ stats on COVID-19 testing
Edit: According to the report, the Centers for Disease Control has been “conflating the results of two different types of coronavirus tests,” which has had the effect of “distorting several important metrics and providing the country with an inaccurate picture of the state of the pandemic.”
1In short, the CDC has been mixing test results from COVID-19 viral tests with COVID-19 antibody tests, which is a fundamental error that could lead to states reopening their economies before they are actually ready to ease up on restrictions.
full article:
https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/new-evidence-shows-the-cdc-has-been-distorting-the-stats-on-covid-19-testing/
I’ve noticed on several blogs over the last few weeks that contrarian posts will show up that are filled with lies or seriously off topic. If you respond to them with counterarguments, they will say a bunch of straw man twaddle or go off topic completely. That’s a sure sign of a bot.
More problematic is when they start with a bot post full of half-truths or flat lies, they get slapped down, and then a second-stringer comes in who is a stronger arguer, and if necessary a third-stringer who is better, but still wrong. This happened quite a bit in the final run-up to November 2016. Please be aware that bots are occasionally backed up by real people, and you need to be on your best game if you want to counter them. Or tell them you’re done playing games and quit.
2If I think there is a bot on Twitter I call them a liar or stupid
Bots dont respond. Real people do.
3One way as a Deep State Operative (moderator) at Wonkette I can figure out if it’s a bot or foreign actor, or just a garden-variety moran, is to respond to a post with a statement like “garden camel ran Dallas green canned clams.”
A bot cannot respond to such a statement coherently (bots will attempt to use some of your words in a reply), resulting in banhammer with prejudice.
Conservative and libertarian trolls are immediately expose as they recognise the sentence as nonsense, then the non-commentariat has at making fun of them.
4Twitter = the comments section in Reddit. Why keep hitting yourself over the head with a hammer?
5Brad at #5:
More like the comment section on a YouTube video.
6The boys don’t trouble me. But then I have a strict policy of only getting posts from people who have shown themselves to be both trustworthy and of discriminaing taste. My client. Fenix. is very good at cutting out the crappy including the sponsored as posts.
7*Takes a deep breath*
And if you think that’s bad, take a peek at the articles & comments at “Daily Caller” or “TheBlaze”. It’s like there is a completely different world they exist in. Sometimes I respond to comments to freshen up my research and editing skills, and the lack of subtleties makes it easy to go with “Don’t feed the Troll (or the Bot)”.
In many ways, I feel as if Russia has already won. They hit the anti-intellectual, anti-Science, “holier than thou”, and of course “some people deserve to be exploited because they aren’t like me” lines to fracture the People. But then they got Cheatolini in place to amp it up to 11, make it public policy, destroy alliances and the State Dept., and bully the remaining allegiance to the *country* out of GOPs. Too bad they are dependent upon petrodollars and are being hit with a pandemic at the same time.
I am unable to do the annual rounds of my family’s graves today, but can do my wife’s family. I haven’t given up, and MSNBC tells me there’s hope. And I am living for the day we can vote that traitor in the White House out, and the long delayed summonses can begin…
8I use @botsentinel and block.
9I hope that more Republicans go mingle, as is their right, maybe their duty, and do not wear masks!
10