Originally posted by Cassius_Smoke
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We have that here and I don't know what the make up of UK MPs is but, here in Ireland, far too many of our politicians are landlords and they are currently raking in a fortune while we have a rent crisis and an epidemic of homelessness and it's disgusting. They won't do anything about it because they're complicit and benefiting from it. -
So a couple of fake news topics this morning.
First is the issue of young Jack Williment-Barr lying on the floor of a hospital with a oxygen mask on due to lack of beds.
It's real, his mother posted it and Dr Yvette Oade, chief medical officer at Leeds apologised.
HOWEVER, there are now posts being made that are insinuating that the photos are fake.
Just breath in that fact for a minute - somebody is suggesting that it was staged.
With that absorbed, you ask "who?"
It's not paranoid Pete from the pub, it's a targeted campaign of disinformation.
This whole Twitter thread explains it:
The same thing is on Facebook.
The problem is, that despite being copy and pasted and some people calling it out as fake, but some people are falling for it, liking it and sharing it.
When a celebrity believes it and retweets it, it gets even more traction.
So, who the **** is organising this targeted campaign?
We are in dangerous times, my friends.Comment
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People seem to want to ignore the extent to which they are being manipulated. The moment it became a reality that there was Russian interference in Brexit, this whole thing should have come crashing down. It hasn't. This is a major problem for modern society and the damage that we've seen in just a few years is immense.
Like seriously, so much of what has become a fire across the US and UK just didn't exist in 2014. These things have been created.Comment
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Next up is the reporting of Matt Hancock going to the Leeds hospital to deal with the issue of the boy on the floor.
It it then reported by the press that a Labour activist was paid to travel there and then punched Hancock's aid.
However, you have a look at the punch and make your own mind up.
That's some serious Bruce Lee stuff going on.
That's not good enough for Kuennsberg, who still maintains how aggressive the protesters are:
It's okay, though, she's finally "happy to apologiSe" for the confusion.
She wasn't sorry, embarrased or ashamed she did it though.
I'm guessing the typo on apologise was because she's not used to typing it.
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Is there any evidence Labour is using bots on twitter etc?Comment
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Mmm... not sure that quite answers the question, Marty. You're not comparing like with like here. Charles asked about Labour's use of bots. Not just online campaigns and managers, which should absolutely be expected in this day and age. This is not the same as having a campaign of bots spreading deliberate and knowing misinformation.Comment
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The difference between the two main partys strategy's is staggering your looking at a quite standard media stratergy vs a company specialising in making bad people look good CTF are a group responsible for large-scale professional disinformation networks with previously paying clients including major polluters, the Saudi Arabian government, and various foreign political campaigns. They are clearly responsible for the fake fact checking website stunt, and the fake Labour manifesto website.Originally posted by MartyG View PostThere are shills on all sides, of course they're all at it:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics...-star-movement
The current spread of fake information surrounding discrediting a 4 year old lying on a hospital floor and his family is probably also down to them too. I'm not going to repeat some the the absolutely disgusting things I've read today though as it gives them a platform and that's what they want.Comment
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It shows that they're employing the same tactics - there's nothing in this thread that shows the Tories have officially sanctioned bots to spread disinformation just one Twitter user's assertion, but we definitely know that all parties are spreading disinformation via their campaigns, online and offline using supporters organised by their campaign managers.
Here are some examples of bot usage in politics: https://www.logically.co.uk/blog/5-w...s-in-politics/
I'd guarantee that the tactics are being used on all sides, because anyone not doing so is going to disadvantage themselves.Last edited by MartyG; 10-12-2019, 11:14.Comment
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That's again not answering the question, Marty. What Charles asked was: is there any evidence Labour is using bots on twitter etc? And I don't know the answer but nothing you've given suggests the answer is yes.
False equivalency is yet another big problem we've been facing over the last few years and this is it right here. Regardless of who commissioned it (and asking who would be a very good start here), there are organised and targeted disinformation campaigns happening on the Tory side. Saying they are all at it because Labour has online campaign managers, equating these two things when there is zero evidence as far as I have seen that there are comparable things happening on the other side (happy to be shown otherwise, but that is what Charles was asking) allows people to dismiss something that absolutely should not be dismissed. They are not all at it. Not at this. It's false equivalency.Comment
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See the link I posted - yes there is previous self-declared bot use by Labour supporters - and I'd suggest it's massively unlikely the same tactics aren't being employed on all sides at the mo.
Can you positively identify that there are officially sactions bots on Twitter for any party currently? Probably not. But we do know that such tactics have historically been used, officially or not.
Edit and there's this academic project around political bots around the 2017 election http://comprop.oii.ox.ac.uk/tag/uk/
From one of the articles there's this quote: "Automated accounts generated a relatively small amount of content about UK politics, and while this automation was spread fairly equally across parties, highly automated accounts associated with the Labour Party were more active in generating traffic."
I'd be surprised if bot use hasn't increased as I'm sure the 2019 studies will reveal.Last edited by MartyG; 10-12-2019, 11:27.Comment
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No, I can't. And yet it's happening and I think it's very important to ask where they are coming from, especially when there has been outside interference (which, as it happens, seems to be something the Tories don't necessarily want coming out all that much). This question should be a far, far bigger deal.Originally posted by MartyG View Post
So your newer link with the Tinderbot thing suggests the answer is yes. Or at least, it has been yes. Again, I don't think there is enough there to suggest any form of equal measures given that most of the other examples on the same page seem to skew more in one direction, even though there is evidence of bot usage across the board. And what it also doesn't cover in detail is the content. What we're seeing at the moment is very clear misinformation and lies and we can see that right now on one side. Again, I don't know if it's happening on the other side and I think that's a good question to ask but I'm not seeing it. And I wouldn't be jumping into any false equivalency until it's actually shown.
And if genuine equivalency is shown, my reaction would not be to just shrug my shoulders at the tactics being employed here - it would be to condemn all of them. This targeted misinformation should not be happening at all.Comment
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There is a more recent article from the The Computational Propaganda Research Project posted yesterday: https://comprop.oii.ox.ac.uk/researc...ion-memo-2019/
And you're right, the tactic should be condemmed, however, the 2017 studies suggest that there were more real links than junk links and for 2019 it's even less which is better news I suppose.
The full PDF is worth a read.Last edited by MartyG; 10-12-2019, 11:38.Comment
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A company who is a specialist in disinformation vs a marketing strategy based around bringing large groups of pro labor posters together online how the hell are the tactics the same???Originally posted by MartyG View PostComment
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It's also that you have no idea who is actually doing it.Originally posted by Dogg Thang View Post
There might genuinely be no-one actively employed by Labour or the Tories who are operating these sock-puppet accounts and dodgy FB pages. I really mean it. Not that neither party is lying online (that's self-evident in some cases) but the specific use of bots and this particularly toxic stuff.
Some of it is down to wildcat actions; individuals who have taken it upon themselves to do it. You'd think it was crazy but these are the same people who wrote into games mags with fake rumours in the 90s; people with nothing better to do who are creating fake audiences to allow them to gain "internet points" in arguments.
However, I'd bet much more of it is due to how the parties have contracted social media people and companies, who have in turn contracted social media people and companies, and if you follow that chain far enough (which no-one does, as it's semi-deliberately obfuscated), you end up with someone in Eastern Europe who is controlling a load of bots and making fake pages.
Then, some of them are supposedly being run by other nations who are deliberately trying to destabalise other countries. That is definitely happening (it isn't just a conspiracy theory), but the tinfoil-hat bit comes in when you try to quantify how much of that is happening.
It's more to do with lack of oversight. The parties lack an ethical compass, because winning is more important to them than winning right, and as a result, they just don't look closely at what their partners are doing.
Incidentally, this isn't just a political thing. Ever wonder how some games come in at #1 on the AppStore completely out of nowhere? Ever wonder why the Flappy Bird creator was a bit of a recluse who didn't want to comment publicly on the game's success? Yeah.Comment
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