Troll networks and Amplification networks are often the same entity. In such cases, judging them as separate platform abuses can do more harm than good.
This is how it works on Twitter.
(Long—but hopefully informative—thread)
1/
A political operator “influencer” (e.g., someone who runs a politicized non-profit) builds a large acct through:
1. Acct stuffing (bots) 2. Organizing a troll network in Twitter DM rooms to “protect” his TL & “fight” the opposition (& sometimes competitors in the same space)
2/
1.Building retweet (RT) DM rooms to amplify messaging (& slowly pulls in real users to “fight the good fight” alongside the bots/trolls)
2.Encouraging people running troll & RT accts to create multiple accts “in case Twitter silences them” (alts=bonus followers)
3/
Almost verbatim, Klyushin regurgitates US news. One of my faves was his thread "directing" Trump about Afghanistan troop withdrawals--nearly every word of which was taken from an Erik Prince interview published just a few days prior.
Soc. media "engagement" numbers can only have meaning if the engagement comes from real & individual accts.
With the sheer magnitude of fake engagement--political & commercial--on soc. media platforms, real engagement can't be determined. Thus, the metric is meaningless at best.
At worst, soc. media "engagement" as a metric is inherently deceptive.
Individuals, political groups, etc. purchase and/or create countless fake engagement. "Look how popular!"
Users & media alike validate the deception when we appeal to non-validated "engagement" as a metric.
Until platforms find a way to: 1. ensure that engagement is *real* 2. prevent (or at least disincentivize) algorithm gaming 3. not duplicate counts (Twitter counts multiple accts run by one person as "individual" accts--see SEC docs)
1/ For years, platforms have been playing good people, journalists, & organizations.
Under the pretense of "fixing" the platforms, they role out PR initiatives that sound oh-so-good. "No more hate!" "No more violence!" "TRANSPARENCY!!!!"
2/ When, in fact, the platforms are doing the barest minimum to fix their deep, systemic, KNOWN problems.
But, well-intended people who want to believe the platforms' PR schtick get roped in. And they even help them with the facade by joining the PR initiatives.
3/ We need to realize that the platforms:
- KNOW what their problems are
- KNOW (better than anyone) how to fix them.
- Have had YEARS to do so.
- Haven't done the hard work necessary to fix the soc. media plague they've wrought.
A very quick Twitter search for the term "vaccinated" pulls up a ton of anti-vax accounts.
I randomly selected one. Went to the account. And, what do you know, some of the accounts Twitter recommeds as a follow that are "similar" are Q accounts.
And while NOT all of the acct's in his followers are real ... (cough, cough) ...
A number of them are Q accounts.
Anti-vax and Q nutters are absolutely intermingled. And, yes, Twitter's algorithms encourage it.
1/ If you think that Twitter is doing enough to clean up its platform, this thread is for you.
You may want to consider what you find when you study the fake acct patterns manually (while documenting them).
The patterns lead you to things like:
2/
Certain commercial accts from all over the world following row-after-row of the same Russian botnet with English profiles—some with clear, political intent.
3/
When you study the patterns, you’ll also find tens of thousands of dormant bots with Russian profile descriptions & English names—shared along a bot-distribution network of mostly real accts. unhackthevote.com/the-russian-en…
Knowing that Russia is still actively attacking us via cyberwar:
I have to wonder HOW Twitter's fancy algorithms haven't removed these fake Russian accts that have English names, an embarrassingly obvious pattern, all following the same acct?
The Pattern 1. Names vs profiles
2. How many words can you make out of the phrase “Russian bot”?
Basically, that’s how these bots are formatted.
The Russians took some pictures, first names, & last names, and randomized them. Scrolling the acct reveals the redundancies.
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