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, 3 tweets, 1 min read
This is a good start, but the big problems are:

1) Bots: programmatically-managed accounts that amplify campaigns through messages, RTs, likes etc
2) Troll farms: mass-human-managed accounts (eg one person controls 100s)

All to fake the appearance of real grassroots activity
To find out more about the weird world of social media troll farms:
google.co.uk/amp/s/www.pri.…
And paid political ads aren’t really a big thing on Twitter. Bad actors have access to all the bot/troll farm accounts they need, spending money with those operators instead of with Twitter.
It’s generally been the legit campaigns that have spent on ads

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Steve Parks
@steveparks
One of the failures of journalism in this period has been the unwillingness to do ‘the dog that didn’t bark’ stories.
Time and again something is promised or threatened, doesn’t happen, and is then simply regarded as ‘no longer a story’. But it is the *absence* that is the story
We’ve had years of ‘If Brexit isn’t done by x date millions will take to the streets and there’ll be violence’ being breathlessly repeated by excited hacks from a Leaver’s baseless claim - giving it authority and having the effect of embedding that belief in the public mindset
What we should now have is reports with clips of those threats, then shots of Parliament square to show there’s only a few people, and contrasting footage with the peaceful million-strong people’s vote march - and questions like ‘is Brexit really still the will of the people?’
Read 7 tweets
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Steve Parks
@steveparks
As my tweets this morning show, the shocking state of journalism in the UK is a big part of why we’re in such a mess. The public simply don’t get the facts, the evidence or any sensible analysis with which to understand events or the choices they need to make
In some cases it is pure bias - the tabloids, far-right blogs funded by foreign sources - but in others it’s simply incompetence, and getting carried away by ‘the game’ of journalism, rather than the profession of reporting
Journalists bounce around hoping they’re first to be the beneficiary of a ‘leak’ from a number 10 ‘source’ so they can be seen as important and at the centre of things. They get caught up in the gossip of personality battles. Shocking opinions become news instead of actual events
Read 4 tweets
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Steve Parks
@steveparks
It’s now clear that Brexit isn’t going to happen. They’ve tried and failed (Johnson doesn’t really want the deal he struck, that was a fig leaf for no deal). The question now is how long does it take to accept that as a nation, stop and move on - today, January, 1 year, 5 years?
The same ministers who have backed Brexit keep banging on about how government should be more like the private sector, so here’s there chance - if a private sector org had spent billions for 3.5 years and not made it work, the project would be killed. That’s what needs to happen
The quicker Leave voters recognise that is what’s needed too, the sooner they can push politicians to solve the *real* problems they experience: the economy, workers’ rights, health and more.
Let’s stop wasting time and money on this farce. Let’s exit Brexit and start anew.
Read 4 tweets

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Hilary. I'm a Joiner. We all are.
@atatimelikethis
Hi #FBPE, we need to talk about #bots, I know many of you are informed and aware, but many more of us are not, and the whole #bot thing has got to a stage that IMHO we need more general awareness - thread⏬
Please share and RT
TLDR Summary
This thread isn't technical
It has some basic education
And then deals with strategic and political issues
IMHO bots are a bigger threat than many understand
Some networking across #FBPE could help
And maybe you can help
The rest of the thread explores these issues
Three steps for everyone
1. Education
Bots (& trolls, farms) are there to spread propaganda and fake news, to create dissent, undermine. Your first protection is knowing they exist and that you’ll meet them. Just reading this makes you safer. Be suspicious of unendorsed "friends"
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Joseph Stalin
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1/8 My favorite #quote by #JosephStalin, which explains the scientific, #DialecticalMaterialist explanation of true freedom in material reality, not just as an abstract ideal. #StalinIsBack #StalinLives #JVStalin #Stalin #StalinQuote #StalinQuotes #Truth #MELS #MarxismLeninism
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Trey Peng
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[Thread] ⚠️ Small warning about Bots/automated strategies on TradingView - even if you're not a developer some of you may be thinking of subscribing to someone's paid-for bot after seeing their apparently impressive results, you should read this first..

#bots #tradingview #ats
I've done fairly extensive research here: T.V.s backtester is a bit buggy making its backtest results questionable. These bugs can manifest in many spurious 'false positives' here's what I've found:
#1 Heikin-Ashi; this is a well known problem. HA candles can be useful in a bot's algo. But their Open & Close price is not the same as the *real* O & C and it's the HA values which T.V. uses to calculate profit & loss. It can be wildly wrong and produce runaway false positives.
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Thomas Binder
@Thomas_Binder
After 70 years of imperial/neoliberal indoctrination the web of lies is so obviously absurde (9/11, Skripal, WH = ISIS, etc.), that it is dissoluting. The empathetic humanity connects, closes ranks and sends their eternal psychopathic rulers and their lackeys into nowhere land.
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A great documentary about psychopathy and society:
The elite invented "democracy" to protect them from the empathetic people. The media are their means for misleading the people sedated by "democracy". This is definitely a bad thing since the people have become educated and the elite almost totally insane.
Read 209 tweets
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Josh Russell
@josh_emerson
Going to try to tweet this as I work through it. Someone out there doesn't like facebook. At least 3-4 different freshly minted botnets are retweeting anything with the #DeleteFacebook hashtag.
#Bot #TwitterBots
the 1st "set" of bots is very similar to the elon musk cryptocurrency scammer bots that are running wild on twitter.
they are retweeting everything this accounBwTYFklRaR
sample accounts:
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@marissafurtner2
@drphbkvk
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@kemberl39902675
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