Twitterbots Are Attacking Bridenstine
Looks like #StopBridenstine tweets about #NASA Administrator nominee Bridenstine use Twitterbots. Many of the Twitter accounts have no user pics, single digit followers, identical text fired out in batches in fast succession seconds/minutes apart like this one from @climatetruth pic.twitter.com/hJ2ZkbGamI
— NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) February 1, 2018
Keith’s note: Here is a larger version of the image. See for yourself. This covers just 2 hours of twitterbot spamming. Each click creates a unique URL that the sponsor uses to learn which Twitter accounts are getting the most click throughs. This is a methodical campaign and the sponsor(s) make no effort to hide that fact. These things cost money. This is the current meme from @ClimateTruth: “Tell The Senate: Reject Climate Denier Jim Bridenstine as head of NASA #StopBridenstine https://act.climatetruth.org/sign/StopBridenstine”. If you go to the petition site and enter a name and email they do not send a confirmation email to let you prove who yo are (I tried). So the name “Holden MuGroyne” is on their petition now. Oddly many of the Twitter accounts tweeting #stopbridenstine stuff follow CT Gov @DanMalloyCT yet if you look at his followers https://twitter.com/DanMalloyCT/following you will see that all of them have protected accounts that you cannot follow. Something strange is going on.
Well, some of the opposition to Mr. Bridenstine nomination seems to be his sympathies towards “new space.” Mr. Musk is one of the most prominent “new space” people around, and he as warned us about the danger of Artificial Intelligences taking over the world. There may be a pattern here.
Seriously, it is disturbing that something as transparent as this could influence a nomination. And, given the expense of such a campaign, someone thinks it can. Maybe Mr. Musk really does have a point. It won’t be long before the state of the art in artificial intelligence improves to the point where this sort of thing won’t be as obviously bogus.
I’m thinking of a sci-fi story where an ai hacks all the voting machines and elects itself President via write-in.
Or uses Neuromarketing research to program the public to make it Emperor…
Or the two most advanced flash-trading algos manipulate the great powers to war, purely as a side-effect of competing against each other in the stock markets.
The AIs will eventually take over but I don’t think they will bother to exterminate us. I think humans will still be around, like the blue-green algae. We just won’t be on the cutting edge.
Or, a novel in which AI becomes so obviously better at running things that we just let it- let it manage govertnment and the economy. Let’s not forget that AI might be very good in instances currently unthinkable.
Jack Williamson envisioned that in his classic story – “With Folded Hands” which should be required reading for all researchers in AI.
I always think of Saberhagen https://uploads.disquscdn.c… and the Beserker series
“The Berserker series is a series of space opera science fiction short stories and novels by Fred Saberhagen, in which robotic self-replicating machines strive to destroy all life.
These Berserkers, named after the human berserker warriors of Norse legend, are doomsday weapons left over from an interstellar war between two races of extraterrestrials. They all have machine intelligence, and their sizes range from that of an asteroid, in the case of an automated repair and construction base, down to human size (and shape) or smaller. The Berserkers’ bases are capable of manufacturing more and deadlier Berserkers as need arises.”
And then the opposition would create their own AI and we would have a liberal AI and a conservative AI battling it out.
I will not let Liberal idiocy turn me into a Trump supporter.
I will not let Liberal idiocy turn me into a Trump supporter.
I will not let Liberal idiocy turn me into a Trump supporter.
I will not let Liberal idiocy turn me into…
The vast majority of the World is concerned about the costs of climate change+critical Earth Science to guide decisions.
Take a moment and consider this really important finding:
To meet the climate change goals, two thirds of the proven carbon reserves cannot be burned. That’s 1.7T barrels of oil and tons of coal that is worthless for at least a century. No, its not exportable, but renewables creates tremendous opportunity. The US and Russia have carbon interests<–catching on?
Then consider the numerous climate deniers that continue to provide false messages to the public. We are working on, and giving tax breaks to, all the wrong things based on facts.
I will not let fake news turn me into a climate denier supporter.
I will not let idiocy turn me into a climate denier supporter.
I think you missed the point of Keith’s article. Regardless of your, or my, views of Mr. Bridenstine, someone is using web bots to influence his confirmation. That is the issue, and I think, a present problem for democracy. If someone can influence public opinion or votes in Congress, just by launch a swarm of web bots, are we really still a national governed by, of and for the people?
The question is do they really influence anyone? Its no different then generating tons of spam email. Its the political marketing experts you should really fear. FYI
https://www.newscientist.co…
Review 2 March 2016
The Persuaders: How we let the PR industry control our minds
You would be surprised how much of our culture, from, Santa Claus to Diamond Engagement Rings, are the result of this type of manipulation. In my classes I teach students about it so they are able to develop resistance to it. Bots are just their latest tools.
The political marketing expert may tell you that people take stories more seriously if they have lots of social media “likes” or if they are “trending.” Artificially creating lots of likes and generating trends in social media is good marketing.
Actually that is promotion, just one area of marketing. Marketing is an example of a business term many folks misuse because the media misuses it. The definition of marketing by the American Marketing Society is:
“Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.”
https://www.ama.org/AboutAM…
These are the four basic utilities of economics that form the framework for business models. In short marketing is and always has been about crafting business models (long before that term emerged) that transform limited resources into products that meet the needs and wants of society.
But the misuse of the term just illustrates how little folks know about how views, attitudes and opinions are formed. The blatant use of bots just brings one aspect to the surface. What you should be worried about is the research being done on persuasion using MRI research, a field called Neuromarketing.
https://www.entrepreneur.co…
Neuromarketing: The Science, Art and Opportunity
Yes, there are many reasons humanity needs a space frontier, and this is one of them 🙂
do they really influence anyone? why continue the practice if they dont see their desired outcome?
As with spam, the basic return to scale holds just enough promise the techies keep doing it.
I don’t know about you, but I’d rather we err on the side of caution since definitive proof of how effective these bot actions is still lacking.
While true, this Administration will do absolutely nothing about it because this is exactly the sort of thing that Russia did during the last Presidential election. And no one in the Administration says anything to the President that makes him even think he didn’t win the election without Russian interference.
Well that and this Administration won’t even impose sanctions on Russia that was supported by all but a tiny handful of Congressmen. Again, because of the election thing. Ugh. We have a real threat to our democracy and it simply will never be addressed by this Administration.
Exhibit 1 of how it works. Just keep focusing on the same message over and over on every discussion board and then attack those who disagree so others fall in line.
Yes, climate change is real, I knew that in the 1970’s. The solution was known then as well, nuclear power and civil engineering to adapt the infrastructure to it. But environmentalists didn’t like solutions that led to more wealth and higher standards of living. They want us to return to nature with “low tech sustainability”. It’s also why they attacked the idea of space settlement and the economic development of space. It’s why they attack firms like SpaceX and Blue Origin now.
“But environmentalists didn’t like solutions that led to more wealth and higher standards of living. They want us to return to nature with “low tech sustainability”. “
As I have gotten older I hope I have come to learn that no one wins an argument. When we have different viewpoints our goal should be to understand the other person’s point of view, not to denigrate it. As an environmentalist, I have been an advocate of nuclear power for several decades. However there is no reason to exclude solar and wind from the solution, when the technologies have advanced so rapidly, along with battery technology that was a fantasy thirty years ago. Energy is one problem with many solutions.
I have no problem with the use of solar panels. The problem with solar thermal and wind turbines are the destruction they do to wildlife, especially birds. If they could be made safe, or a placed in areas where interaction with birds is minimized, both are fine.
But in the rush to prevent theorized damage to ecosystems based on WAGs on what may result from climate change very real damage is being done now to ecosystems that is being ignored.
I don’t quite see how solar thermal affects wildlife. There are environmental impacts, but solar panels are worse. Lower conversion efficiency for panels means more heat from sunlight which is absorbed but not converted. In terms of production, making mirrors is less polluting than making solar cells.
On the other hand, with solar panels, most of those issues come up in urban area which have already been environmentally impacted rather heavily. A solar thermal plant would take up acres of currently empty land (and probably desert at that.)
You must not have been following the results at the Ivanpoe solar thermal plant in the Mojave desert. The migratory birds that fly through the concentrated sunlight are called streamers as their feathers ignite and they fall to the ground literally cooked. According to the LA Times it is 6000 birds per year,
http://www.latimes.com/loca…
I was actually not referring to human-caused global warming as idiocy. My views on that topic don’t align exactly with yours or Trump’s.
By “idiocy” I was referring to the no holds barred, no sacrifice of credibility is to great, straw-grasping, wild-eyed, hate-mongering crusade that the Left has been on since the morning after election day.
I don’t think that the level of effort reflected in this bot-attack had all that much to do with climate change specifically but with a more general, block all progress of this Administration attitude.
Yes. As someone who studied those techniques in graduate school, and teach students to be aware of them, it was fascinating to watch the process to unfold.
Not since the months leading up to the Civil War has such a large demographic of otherwise thoughtful, reasonable people so suddenly gone so bat-guano crazy. Trump’s provocative posture is certainly a big part of it but I’m starting to have difficulty blaming it all on him.
Sorry for going on and on with this, Keith, I’ll stop. It’s just frightening for someone who loves this country as much as I do to watch it burn like this. I’m sure others here would agree.
Yes, this is drifting off topic, but then as now a president many at the time viewed as incompetent was elected by a minority of the popular vote. President Lincoln was constantly attacked by the media of the day as “stupid” and “reckless”. He grew a beard because he got tired of the media making fun of his ugly face so he decided to hide it. Indeed, there was just a excellent and well researched book written about it.
http://abrahamlincolnblog.b…
“An important new book has been released in the past few months which reveals just how despised Abraham Lincoln was by his opponents, the press, the intelligentsia, and abolitionists. The book, written by Larry Tagg, is titled “The Unpopular Mr. Lincoln” with the subtitle of “The Story of America’s Most Reviled President.”
But then he died and he became a mythical figure. The same with President Kennedy. He was in Dallas because he was afraid he wouldn’t be re-elect because of all the media attacks on him. And the Republican Congress hated President Andrew Johnson, a Southern Democrat, so much they not only denied many of his appointments, but actually reduced the size of the Supreme Court to deny him the opportunity to fill two vacancies on it. And yes, that is correct, President Lincoln,a Republican, actually selected a Southern Democrat to be his Vice-President in the 1864 election in an attempt to heal the nation.
It’s funny how we remember historical figures versus how folks viewed them at the time. It also shows that this Senate’s opposition to approving appointments like Rep. Bridenstine is not new. Yes, if they had twitter bots then they would have used them to influenced public opinion.
The denigration of national institutions for political gain is step one down an awful road.
“I’m starting to have difficulty blaming it all on him”
What about years of conservative talking heads on radio and TV that don’t give a whit about the facts? These people have been feeding their listeners and viewers with propaganda for decades now. Every legitimate fact checking group/website shows this is true. Trump is the result of this war on the facts, not the cause.
The thing that scares me most is the way they make “the other” the enemy. This is not at all inline with the foundation of the US (hint: it was almost exclusively by immigrants many of whom were fleeing oppressive regimes). That and that same approach has been used by oppressive regimes all over the world since the beginning of recorded history.
If we’re not careful, the US will become the sort of country that our founders were fleeing.
And let’s not forget the liberals who have been doing the same thing for the same amount of time. They live in two distinct and completely separated media worlds and both play loosely with the truth.
That’s a false equivalency. Fact checks prove that Fox News lies and misleads the public far more than the other networks that are considered “liberal news media” by the watchers of Fox News.
You’re entitled to your own opinion, but not your own data. The fact is that reality has a liberal bias (at least in the United States).
The frequency of things fact checks turn up is, in itself, debatable. I’ve seen some work showing that conservatives are fact checked more often than liberals (either because of a greater habit of making surprising claims or because someone thinks it will lead to a more interesting story, or whatever.) So the raw number of checks which turn up bogus or misleading statements isn’t the whole story.
I used to be a registered Republican. I started to sour on them based on the false justification of chemical weapons used to re-enter war with Iraq. At the time I believed them, but it turned out to be a complete fabrication by the Administration.
On top of that, I am a fiscal conservative who is completely aghast at the lack of fiscal responsibility that I’m seeing coming out of the current Republican dominated Congress. Blowing the deficit out of proportion for tax cuts when the economy is strong is completely ass-backwards fiscal policy.
Today’s Republicans aren’t at all who I used to vote for.
So you obviously are unconcerned that Cycle 24, which is just ending early, is the weakest cycle in about two centuries.
Or that Dr. Hansen, et al, are now predicting a mini-ice age from global warming.
http://www.atmos-chem-phys….
“Global temperature becomes an unreliable diagnostic of planetary condition as the ice melt rate increases.Global energy imbalance (Fig. 15b) is a more meaningful measure of planetary status as well as an estimate of the climate forcing change required to stabilize climate.”
Guess with a double whamming its time to invest in snow mobiles and snow blowers. And good old reliable nuclear power.
This may not even be liberal idiocy. The people controlling these bots could be the people that used bots to flood the FCC with comments opposed to net neutrality.
The last election demonstrated dramatically how vulnerable we are to disinformation and other manipulation by bots and people with agendas that are often not congruent with the agendas of neither the Democrats or Republicans.
This is growing threat–the bots and those controlling the bots (and using other methods to incite anger or worse)–that needs addressing.
And the Russian bots trying to affect American politics and all kinds of things.
War is peace
Freedom is slavery
Ignorance is strength
2+2=5
Are we really at the point which George Orwell imagined in 1948? Where technology lets a few people manipulate the views of the whole population? I really hope not, but I’m getting worried.
Not the whole population, just those unable to think for themselves. But don’t blame technology, it was being done in the days of old Rome. It’s why Thomas Jefferson believed a good education system was essential to Democracy, something we started losing in the 1960’s.
I know and I shouldn’t be so negative. But I’m afraid my current, bedtime reading has influenced me. I’m rereading works like Miller’s _The_Crucible_ and Brecht’s _Galileo_ and _Mother_Courage_. It is hard to be optimistic about the human race with those works in your mind.
Someday scholars will look back at our downfall and remark how we let an electronic bumper sticker substitute for debate.
I’ve seen this elsewhere, same exact post from multiple different accounts. Seems like it would be easy for Twitter to filter.