A Quarter of All Tweets About Climate Crisis Produced By Bots (theguardian.com) 129
XXongo writes: According to a yet-to-be-published study from Brown University of the origin of 6.5 million tweets about climate and global warming, a quarter of all tweets about climate on an average day are produced by bots, disproportionately skeptical of climate science and action. The Brown University study wasn't able to identify any individuals or groups behind the battalion of Twitter bots, nor ascertain the level of influence they have had on the climate debate. "On an average day during the period studied, 25% of all tweets about the climate crisis came from bots," reports The Guardian. "This proportion was higher in certain topics -- bots were responsible for 38% of tweets about 'fake science' and 28% of all tweets about the petroleum giant Exxon. Conversely, tweets that could be categorized as online activism to support action on the climate crisis featured very few bots, at about 5% prevalence."
Missing context (Score:5, Insightful)
What percentage of all tweets are produced by bots?
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Something like 34%
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Does that include Trump?
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Does it include the dating tweets luring customers to their subscription websites?
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In shocking announcement, people who accuse anyone with right-wing views of being just another Russian bot have concluded that most of Trump's followers are Russian bots. News at 11.
So....numbers don't count, but liars do?
Seems we have a winner today
That is the DUMBEST thing I will read this day
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In shocking announcement, people who accuse anyone with right-wing views of being just another Russian bot have concluded that most of Trump's followers are Russian bots. News at 11.
Since the rightwing is that tiny subset of syphilitic degraded morons who wore the teabags and now wear swastikas, how else to appear "mainstream"?
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Why are bots allowed to tweet at all? It is a social platform for humans to interact, no machine should be creating content. That is pure expolitation.
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Why are bots allowed to tweet at all? It is a social platform for humans to interact, no machine should be creating content. That is pure expolitation.
I don't understand why anyone tweets at all. Or why anyone follows people on twitter, so I guess I couldn't answer that question.
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Or why anyone pays attention to what's being tweeted.
My tweets are better than your peer-review science publication? There may be problems with science publications, reproducibility, and all of that, but to make that assertion is false equivalence.
Not peer reviewed. Tabloid claim on leaked draft (Score:3)
It's interesting to note that TFA is not a peer reviewed science publication, but a leak, of a draft, of an as-yet-not-published paper in an unstated state of peer review.
The leak is in The Guardian, a UK tabloid noted for being accused of faking quotes from Julian Assange and for a 2017 claim, later retracted (after a storm of protest from security professionals) of discovery of a backdoor in Whats App (different from the issues discovered in 2019).
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Free the bots!!!
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The best study into that so far gives a range of 9 to 15%.
But it's not evenly spread, some subjects are far worse than others. And that includes things that clearly identify as bots, which are fine.
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twitterbots huh, gotta get me one of those, post across different networks in one go, sounds like a plan for the future i cant find no more
Only Twitter? (Score:3)
I wouldn't be surprised if a large proportion of posts about climate change here on Slashdot and many other forums such as Youtube were produced by bots.
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From observation, there aren't enough and they're not consistent enough. From a few trolls, yes, that seems consistent with their poor quality and erratic content.
Re:Only Twitter? (Score:5, Insightful)
I wouldn't be surprised if a large proportion of posts about climate change here on Slashdot and many other forums such as Youtube were produced by bots.
First, we should have a clear definition of bot. My technical background tells me that a bot is just a little piece of code to automate things, some people extends the term to include shills and astroturfers, the media often seem to include people with opinions they do not like in the bot count, fringe or not. General public just does not know, for them it is one of those foggy concepts they do not understand and do not need to understand, because the experts know better.
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I wouldn't be surprised if a large proportion of posts about climate change here on Slashdot ... were produced by bots.
Nah. Bots would at least pretend to sound coherent.
SILENCE HERETIC! (Score:2)
callRefute10Count /EndcallRefute10Count
10. The Science is Settled!
20. The Science is Settled!
30. The Science is Settled!
40. The Science is Settled!
50. The Science is Settled!
60. The Science is Settled!
70. The Science is Settled!
80. The Science is Settled!
90. The Science is Settled!
100. The Science is Settled!
#Line counters for debugging only. Remove before production...
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You forgott:
GOTO 10
Error bars? (Score:2)
I welcome this work, but I doubt there is a reliable test for bot-ness. The study uses a particular tool which has been developed at a university. A cutting-edge bot farm is probably very protective of its techniques, and is unlikely to give them any hints, or a good sample of their output to analyse. Probably the original report is clearer on this.
I also wonder whether the 5% of bot comments for global warming are real, or just the background noise.
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> A cutting-edge bot farm
I'm sorry, but that model is like a "cutting edge spammer" or a "cutting edge botnet", or a "cutting edge computer virus". There are resources that can be used, motivations to use them, and perceived benefit to the attackers. They need not be well designed or even competent to flood the networks, and the very poor quality flood leave niches for more competent attacks to slip past the defenses being overwhelmed by the poor quality attacks.
That said, it's relatively easy to detect
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Basically yes. A large amount of the auto-generated traffic is quite obviously so. The suggestion that further, more subtle attacks are hiding in the noise also seems quite likely.
Well, if you are spreading lies (Score:2)
You might as well go fully dishonest and automatize the process.
Re: Well, if you are spreading lies (Score:2)
Which I think demonstrates that whilst our work on Artificial Intelligence has a long way to go, we've barely scratched the surface on artificial stupidity.
On a serious note, does the study make a distinction on deliberately automated comments and bots posing as human commentators? If we're including the bots from organisations like NOAA, GISS, US
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Weaponized bot-calling and fake news (Score:3, Informative)
Looks like The Guardian simply labels people they disagree with as bots: https://reclaimthenet.org/twit... [reclaimthenet.org]
That one account posted a lot of ramblings but that's what humans do. 3% chance of being a bot is apparently enough for The Guardian to call for canceling people. Hell, a 2% chance seems to be enough, too. Also, the "study" is a draft that has not been peer-reviewed.
And they wonder why they get called fake news and biased.
Re: Weaponized bot-calling and fake news (Score:1)
Bot denialist! Heretic! DENIALIST!!!1!!1!!
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Free speech cuts both ways
3% chance of being a bot is apparently enough for The Guardian to [use their free speech]
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But free speech is a concept that applies to everyone and everything! It's not just the first amendment!
Signed,
Conservative concern troll
Re: Weaponized bot-calling and fake news (Score:1)
Re: Weaponized bots spread misinformation (Score:1)
Re: Weaponized bots spread misinformation (Score:1)
Artlcle 10 my ass. It's not worth the ink on the paper when you can still be jailed for t
Close but no cigar. Agree with your basic point. (Score:2)
The Guardian is a UK rag. They do -not- have free speech rights. That's an American thing.
They do not have protection of free speech rights built into the foundation of their governmental and legal system. The US Bill of Rights is clear that it does not GRANT these rights, which were considered pre-existing and "god given". Instead what it does is explicitly forbid the government from trying to interfere with exercise of (a named subset of) them, with Free Speech and a Free Press included among the expli
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The UK has free speech rights, but posting comments on a companies web site is covered by thr companies terms, asshole.
Re: Weaponized bot-calling and fake news (Score:2)
You know the study is flawed right away by their use of judgmental language. Just more agitprop for the mob.
Re: Weaponized bot-calling and fake news (Score:2)
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The "data scientist" they cite is Alex Griswold, a right wing hack who writes hit pieces about centre and left leaning publications.
His "evidence" are some tweets he saves before they were deleted.
If this is the case then why bother with Twitter? (Score:2)
Just let it rot and fester with all those Bots slagging each other off plus the occasional word of lunacy from Donald there really is little to justify its existence let alone using it for anything productive.
much the same could be said about the content that gets posted on FaceBook, Instagram and Whatsapp.
Either get rid of the bots or get rid of the platform they use.
So the logical conclusion would be (Score:2)
- Climate change is beneficial to bots
- Exxon is run by bots
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It's like you're Sarah Connor. You can see the whole picture that nobody else sees.
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Twitter? Who gives a shit about Twitter? (Score:1)
ohnooooz (Score:1)
...by Polarizing bots (Score:2)
Son, do you know what Twitter is? (Score:2)
Twitter IS a PR platform!
EVERYONE on ther is doing PR. In one way or another.
What does "Come from bots" mean anyway?
It's not like thinking machines are writing text here.
It's *people* writing text, maybe in template form, and *spamming* it. It is not "bots". It is *people spamming*!
Which is kinda to PR what alcohol is to German Carnival. (Nobody will admit it, but it's the reason it is done at all!)
Not that it is OK in any way, shape or form, btw. (Score:1)
Noticed people might think I'm thinking that, after posting.
My standpoint is that all advertisement/marketing/PR/politics/lobbyism/TV talkin heads/etc is a captal crime equivalent to treason, and requiring banishment from society, or death incase of refusal to leave. ;)
What can I say... I stay fair, but I don't like to drag out, compromise or half-ass things.
Yet-to-be-published study (Score:2)
Well then publish it. Put it out there for peer review and stake your reputation on it.
But please don't split off a group of analysts, call them 'Climate Science Publicity Experts' and then claim that they constitute a legitimate peer group.
Bots there for a reason (Score:2)
Turf (Score:2)
"Bot and bot. What is bot?"
Can You Say "Moscow?" (Score:1)
I knew you could.
What better subject than this, a problem with absolutely no solution, that is designed to harm the US economy with woefully inadequate measures to attack the problem at ginormous costs.
There's not a law that the US could pass that would noticeably affect the production of CO2 world-wide. This problem will be solved in exactly one place, and it isn't any halls of legislature anywhere. It is in research laboratories that will discover the way to build batteries that store renewable energy
Can You Say Brain Dead McCarthyism (Score:1)
Russia has a smaller economy than Spain. Their defense budget is less than $50 billion a year. Democrats and the media mocked Romney [youtu.be] in 2012 for saying Russia was a threat, yet here we are with a huge number of Americans trained to shit the bed on command any time neocons say BOO. The same neocons who lied you into Iraq, only now they aren't even bothering to provide evidence for their bullshit.
Bullshit that people like you have just eaten up. With a spoon.
Just like the rest of all the tweets (Score:2)
Bots replying to bots.
I believe in climate change (Score:2)
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Why not. Both things can be true at the same time - bee populations dropping while we have more mosquitos carrying more diseases.
All my very best opinions (Score:2)
....are yet-to-be-published studies.
suspected so much (Score:2)
suspected as much, but ofcourse the real question remains unanswered, who is behind it?
A 30 billionaire will spend whatever for subsidies (Score:1)
And we ALL know whom I refer to.
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Yes, it is truly sad that we need young women like Greta to speak, since for some reason, humanity failed to listen to all the other voices shouting Danger, Will Robinson.
No one is convinced by messages like "We're all doomed and it's all your fault, how dare you". This is not going to convince any of the doubters or outright deniers, at best it will inspire a few other activists. But off-putting rhetoric like this may actually turn away ordinary people who are willing to contribute and make changes in their personal lives: "If it's going to be like that, then screw it", perhaps she is doing more harm than good. Plus her association with the foaming-at-the-mouth-marxists
Re: The rest (Score:2)
Re:The rest (Score:5, Informative)
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I guess pointing out the truth and calling out people for spreading misinformation is now "trolling".
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What the fuck does Greta's appearance have to do with anything?
If she feels strongly about an issue and wants to speak on it let her. Only a shallow fucking moron feels the need to discuss people's appearance as though that should change your perceptions of what they say and do.
I feel sorry for Greta personally, that poor child is now stuck in the game surrounded by blistering fucking morons for the rest of her life and she will live long enough to regret it. And the worst part, she can never back down fr
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At her age I was online triggering the overly sensitive whiners and having a blast watching them whine and cry and get all worked up about shit that doesn't matter.
Sure, you tell yourself that. While you think you may have been the epitome of the troll man, in actual fact you probably were but never read to the end of the webcomic. More likely you were spewing slurs and got yelled at for being an idiot.
Were you getting 1 million in currency you didn't do anything for as a PR stunt?
Oh a million in currency!
Re: The rest (Score:1)
Re: The rest (Score:1)
Re: The rest (Score:1)
Re: The rest (Score:2)
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Dude, don't victim-blame. She's not that pretty, she's self-described autistic, and she's a child being used as a political puppet.
Of course she hasn't studied economics and climate science in college. Rather, she's manipulated by strange parents and has had a "political trainer" out of a Soros-funded "climate action" group for a few years. Did you hear Bernie get punked by Russians pretending to be them? It's so strange that even a seasoned politician can't tell what's going on and bows to this child.
Ev
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Ok boomer!
Since you found /. you're clearly both too old and too educated to use that stupid cliché catchphrase.
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Do you guys all hang out on a wingnut Facebook group together? Is that why you all use this same obnoxious talking point? Just because all you didn't have an independent thought in your head until you were 35 doesn't mean a teenager isn't capable of doing that.
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Try just this very small amount of Polonium, it’s so little it can’t possibly harm you!
Fallacious reasoning at its finest.
The effects of the CO2 in the atmosphere don’t care about your lack of understanding the basic science that underpins climate change,
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You should tell him how small, or he takes to much and kills hundrets with his breath ....
Fascinating (Score:2)
You do realize you are exemplifying the argument you are mocking, yes? Why are you and the rest of the wingnuts have your lizard brain go into overdrive over a teenage activist? You guys act like she got in a car with Michael Moore and ran over your dog when you were five
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How do you come to the stupid idea that you can drop out of high school at age of 17 in a civilized country?
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So far the only thing actually doing something to stop the pollution is the corona virus.
Thank your local Horseman of the Apocalypse?
Makes the supposed "problem of evil" look rather more complex, doesn't it?
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It's actually quite horrible and i hope the disease is stopped.
But we do need something less horrible that still stops the CO2 from the countries that well are emitting most of it, to not mention CFC, that is something all the sane countries stopped using in the 90's because it was quite clear it was a sure and quick way to burn everyone to death, but now is being dabbled on again.
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If you are able to survive 20 years from now, you'll be wanting to thank that sneering petulant child.
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she's a sneering petulant little child
#TriggeredMuch?
country + parents did better - IRONY (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh, the irony of you saying she is on hormones; classic American ignorance!
More likely she eats properly and isn't loaded up with hormones and chemicals like Americans. Doesn't "got milk" every day, aka cow growth formula... or have them in the meat... or chemical artificial estrogens in her water (for decades as CPVC plumbing was/is big in the USA, plus all those other sources more common and slower to be banned in the USA.)
Have substandard, unproven, or shady food products? forget dumping them on 3rd wo
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BGH doesn't affect humans. [cancer.org]