[jon.kiparsky]

The Times ran a pretty striking piece on the front page yesterday, miniature stories - lives in haiku, almost - taken from 1000 obituaries, to mark the passing of 100,000 Americans from COVID-19.

The online version is here

Somehow the combination of those stories and Memorial Day weekend put me in mind of this song by Emmylou Harris and Guy Clark.

[ge∅]

ArtificialSoldier, on 25 May 2020 - 07:45 PM, said:

I thought we were going to see something like this:

https://www.npr.org/...are-likely-bots

The polls showing huge support for the common sense rules, combined with all of these anti-lockdown Facebook groups and websites that were all using the same text, made it seem like someone was trying to amplify the opposition to the lockdown. It's straight out of Russia's playbook from 2015/2016, just identify any wedge issue, no matter how small, and amplify it. Not that there aren't 10 to 20% of people who don't think the lockdown is a great idea, but it feels like the pushes to protest (and that awesome MAGA boat parade in SC) just might be organized by someone who is not American but wants to make you think they are.

To be fair, copy and pasting is conspiracy theorists' modus operandi. You have a small group of people generating the content, a somewhat bigger group building upon it on their own channel/blog/whatever, and a very big number of people relaying it. Researchers say it's most of the time possible to tell fake news from proper news by the way they spread. Proper news usually spread horizontally: a small number of people decide to share it to a large number of contacts of which only a fraction will share it to their own contacts and the chain stops early, whereas bogus news spread vertically: you sneeze it somewhere and people re-sneeze it endlessly. An explanation is that fake news appeal to emotions (outrage, fear) so they kind of short-circuit your brain while proper information is only little surprising/concerning and often emits form an authority so you expect other people to be exposed to it by other means.

I'm not saying there are no bots but spreading misinformation about COVID-19, considering the correlation with deaths and hospitals overload, could be considered an act of war. I am not sure Russia or China would risk that. Also we are talking about human lives. I don't know, maybe I'm not cynical enough but I prefer to be cautious.

This post has been edited by ge∅: 27 May 2020 - 01:46 AM

[andrewsw]

How come nearly all politicians (and newscasters) have such neat hair? They can't all be married to hairdressers.

[ArtificialSoldier]

Quote

To be fair, copy and pasting is conspiracy theorists' modus operandi. You have a small group of people generating the content, a somewhat bigger group building upon it on their own channel/blog/whatever, and a very big number of people relaying it.

It wasn't just the content, domain registrations pointed to a small number (1 to 3) of people or groups operating all of the websites advocating opening the various states:

https://krebsonsecur...n-domain-surge/

It's a small number of people or groups, maybe domestic, possibly some foreign, just trying to amplify their signal.

That's not about Twitter though, I don't know how bots on Twitter are identified but I assume it has to do with timing. If a particular account tends to take seconds to retweet most things, for example, it's probably a bot.

Quote

I'm not saying there are no bots but spreading misinformation about COVID-19, considering the correlation with deaths and hospitals overload, could be considered an act of war. I am not sure Russia or China would risk that.

I don't know, Russia literally invaded Ukraine and their response was to just act like the soldiers were volunteers and it wasn't anything official, and there was some "popular uprising."

[ge∅]

ArtificialSoldier said:

It's a small number of people or groups, maybe domestic, possibly some foreign, just trying to amplify their signal.

Possibly foreign but the source in the link says

Quote

Many of the domains are still dormant, leading to parked pages and registration records obscured behind privacy protection services. But a review of other details about these domains suggests a majority of them are tied to various gun rights groups, state Republican Party organizations, and conservative think tanks, religious and advocacy groups.

I don't know if I trust rumours on reddit anyway and I don't know the site you are linking so I take it with a pinch of pink Himalayan salt, but it would make sense to me that gun rights groups would want to create echo chambers because if you make the USA look like a police state who is turning against its population, people are more likely to care about the 2nd amendment.

ArtificialSoldier said:

I don't know how bots on Twitter are identified but I assume it has to do with timing. If a particular account tends to take seconds to retweet most things, for example, it's probably a bot.

Here is an excerpt from the article you linked which lists what criteria they include:

Quote

Using a so-called bot-hunter tool, researchers flagged accounts that tweet more than is humanly possible or claim to be in multiple countries within a few hours' period. Researchers say they examine a Twitter account's followers, frequency of tweeting and how often the user is mentioned on the platform in determining whether the tweeter is a bot account.

By the way I was baffled by what the Twitter spokesperson reportedly said

Quote

"People often refer to bots when describing everything from automated account activity to individuals who would prefer to be anonymous for personal or safety reasons, or avoid a photo because they've got strong privacy concerns,"

Is it just me or is the guy in denial?

ArtificialSoldier said:

I don't know, Russia literally invaded Ukraine and their response was to just act like the soldiers were volunteers and it wasn't anything official, and there was some "popular uprising."

Fair enough!

This post has been edited by ge∅: 27 May 2020 - 12:31 PM

[ArtificialSoldier]

Quote

I don't know the site you are linking

Brian Krebs is one of the few journalists that I really respect, he's been doing investigative journalism mainly around computer security issues for years now. He used to have a column I think in the Washington Post before spinning it off into his own thing. He's a solid journalist, though.

[DarenR]

look at these douches

https://www.yahoo.co...-024647950.html


i live near one of these morons

[ArtificialSoldier]

Now a message from the love child of Jon Stewart and Andrew Dice Clay:

https://youtu.be/GLcNStHTDjM?t=10

Also a great example in favor of facemasks.

That guy's cardiologist must be thanking god.

And his cocaine dealer, too.

[h4nnib4l]

I knew what video that link pointed to before I even clicked it.

[ArtificialSoldier]

Last I heard, we were at about +50% in AZ, now we're +101% for new cases over a week:

https://www.axios.co...78a607154d.html

[macosxnerd101]

Shutdowns prevented 60 Million COVID cases in the US.

https://thehill.com/...rus-cases-in-us

[jon.kiparsky]

New cases are going up in 14 states and Puerto Rico.

I don't know how people are not getting this: nothing has materially changed since early March in terms of the factors that made isolation a good policy. There is no vaccine, no significant degree of post-infection immunity (we're miles from "herd immunity"), there's no significant testing, and the virus is still very much present in every community. The reduced spread in places like Massachusetts and New York only indicates that what we've been doing is working. It does not indicate that we should stop doing it.

[DarenR]

notice it's all those red states that dont believe in science that have to get their fingernails painted

[NeoTifa]

Fingernails painted?

[ArtificialSoldier]

The protests couldn't have hit at a worse time, I think this is going to make a huge spike in a week or two.