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Fake News and Weaponized Bots: How Algorithms Inflate Profiles, Spread Disinfo and Disrupt Democracy

Fake News and Weaponized Bots: How Algorithms Inflate Profiles, Spread Disinfo and Disrupt Democracy

Photo Source Mike Corbett | CC BY 2.0

Algorithms are getting so sophisticated that it is becoming increasingly difficult to tell which online comments are real and which are generated by “bots”; which sites are genuinely popular and which are generating fake hits. In my new book Real Fake News (Red Pill Press), I argue that fake news can be traced back to ancient Babylon (at least) and that today’s hi-tech fakery is merely a continuation of policies designed to reinforce elite domination, be the given elite “right-wing” or “left-wing.”

DO BOTS AFFECT PERCEPTIONS?

Online fake news has become a phenomenon. By the time President Trump came to power, few Americans had heard of the “alt-right,” the ideological grouping partly responsible for Trump’s electoral success. Trump lost the popular vote by 2.6 million, but he won the Electoral College vote. In other words, “alt-right” voters were numerous enough to give Trump a plurality in the overall vote and thus the Electoral College. How do we explain this discrepancy, that online fake news is a phenomenon, yet its main champions remain obscure to most Americans?

It turns out that bots are pushing fake news s to make stories go “viral” by sharing them among fake bot accounts (“sock puppets”) on social media. In 2011, a team at Texas A&M University  created gibberish-spewing Twitter accounts. Their nonsense could not have possibly interested anyone, yet soon they had thousands of followers. They found that their Twitter “followers” were, in fact, bots.

In 2017 under a Pentagon grant, Shao et al. analysed 14 million Tweets spreading 4,000 political messages during the 2016 US Presidential campaign. They found that “[a]ccounts that actively spread misinformation are significantly more likely to be bots.” Fake news, they say, includes “hoaxes, rumors, conspiracy theories, fabricated reports, click-bait headlines, and even satire.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Inhuman: What The Establishment’s Bot Hysteria Reveals About Their View Of The Masses

It is particularly ironic, then, that the plutocratic class has developed an intense phobia of Twitter bots. In this author’s view, their intense abhorrence can be read in Jungian terms as the subconscious projection of the establishment’s shadow. That is, the more the elite protest about the use of bots on social media, the more they are likely to use such technologies and similar tools to attack the very human public that they constantly misidentify as inhuman bots. 

The concept for this article arose after a minor furor erupted on Twitter regarding an application designed by Robhat Labs intended to identify bots disseminating political propaganda, which was found to have been incorrectly classifying many real human social media accounts as bots, myself included. Excellent independent media thinkers have reported extensively on the issue of false attribution of dissent to Russian bots, including Adam Carter with his coverage of Hamilton 68, published via Disobedient Media.

The establishment’s deranged fantasies regarding Twitter trolls culminated recently in Robert Mueller’s indictment of members of a Russian click-bait farm. Disobedient Media and other independent media figures were quick to point out that the indictment was an utter joke.

The establishment’s hysteria regarding bots on social media unintentionally provides key insight into their view of the masses they have abused for so long. Calling your opponent a bot dehumanizes them from the start. It strips the subject of the essence of their humanity, their right to free speech and dissent. 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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