What is stopping Twitter from releasing server logs for others to independently authenticate attribution? Facebook, Google have not declared. The ASPI analysis proceeds on assumption that Twitters attribution is correct. The startup Digital Intelligence concludes confidently "China has made its debut as a confirmed information operations actor" because the bots coordinated behavior "emulat[es] divisive disinformation tactics seen in other disinformation campaigns from Russia and Iran".<p>That said, the take away from both analysis is that 30 (DI) - 112 (ASPI) of the ~900 accounts have high likelihood of being an disinformation network... that operated for over 2 years, using many re-purposed spam/dating/escort/porn accounts that was never sanitized to preserve cover. Evaluate the scale and operational rigor of this network and it's hard to conclude this is state-level tradecraft than some independent agent/contractor with limited resources and basic scripting knowledge.<p>Leave it to NYT to sneak in balance at the end with inflammatory headline.<p>>Elise Thomas, one of the authors of the Australian report, said that the low level of professionalism suggested that the campaign was not the work of the People’s Liberation Army or the Ministry of State Security, which have previously been linked to Chinese cyberespionage and information campaigns.<p>>“I would be surprised if the P.L.A. was responsible because I would expect they would be more competent than this,” Ms. Thomas said.<p>Yeah. Look, China is bad at foreign influence campaigns, but this is insultingly bad. I'm completely willing to believe China has expanded propaganda efforts abroad, but this doesn't feel like it.<p>E: unsurprisingly people are already using the article to accusing others of being bots. Because humans writing and replying unique responses are equivalent to automated bots that copy and base tweets on a schedule.
Am starting to feel this trolling is an industry (like troll farm) of its own - there are people or bots dedicated to trolling and reporting people who raise voice against the discrimination.. I recently had to report an unfair service by virgin atlantic staff after an emergency landing - I tweeted the pictures and video of the incident.. I was immediately trolled by twitter accounts about how i should be happy that I am alive - I was complaining about how the staff handled the issues after the emergency landing .. wish the social media companies could raise voice against companies or countries that use their platform to discredit real concern - guess people do not matter anymore
It's a good time to remember that the vast majority of people never use Twitter. The media has had a fixation with the platform for as long as I can remember, which has helped it gain an unearned reputation as being relevant.<p>It's not relevant. It's the trash heap of the internet. I can't understand why anyone would continue to spend time on it when it's become universally known that bots and trolls run the show.
A lot more data here, which was referenced in the article: <a href="https://medium.com/digintel/welcome-to-the-party-a-data-analysis-of-chinese-information-operations-6d48ee186939" rel="nofollow">https://medium.com/digintel/welcome-to-the-party-a-data-anal...</a>
I really hate how inherently biased and subjective most reporting about "social bots" seems to be.<p>For these last years headlines about all kinds of "bot armies" are constantly making the rounds, getting blamed for pretty much everything from Trump's election to Brexit.<p>Often based on some research that defines the parameters for a user being a "social bot", that they have extremely high false-positive rates, but still end up only identifying hundreds, maybe thousands of accounts, on platforms that have total user numbers in the hundreds of millions or even over a billion.<p>That is already enough to cause widespread paranoia about Chinese/Russian/Iranian trolls supposedly being everywhere.<p>So anybody on Twitter, Facebook or Reddit who's opinions and views don't align with a certain Overton window, are quickly labeled as being "foreign influencers", regardless of any arguments or facts whatsoever, in a purely ideological reaction of "What, you do not agree that <insert country> is evil?! How dare you!".<p>Meanwhile, barely anybody talks about the reality that these kinds of games are played by pretty much everybody [0] [1], but I guess it would be weird for a US American platform to ban users for spreading pro-US propaganda. Tho, it's still scary how completely oblivious most people seem to be about that, while seeing the Chinese/Russian/Iranian version everywhere.<p>[0] <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-operation-social-networks" rel="nofollow">https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-op...</a><p>[1] <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Blackout2015/comments/4ylml3/reddit_has_removed_their_blog_post_identifying/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/Blackout2015/comments/4ylml3/reddit...</a>
In a few years the Chinese economy will experience much slower growth rate (similar to the West) and people will get out of the this 30-year hypnotic state of fast-moving and dehumanizing economic development and quest for money (which the CCP has used to consolidate its grip) and with the growing corruption at increasingly higher levels of the government, the people will eventually demand what is theirs: The right to rule and appoint their rulers and then the CCP will be in trouble, and there won't be a blazingly fast economic growth to hide behind.
twitter is just a cesspit now. I have watched this happen to my own country (the UK) with trolls and bots constantly pumping out anything which gets an emotional reaction of outrage.
I stopped trusting any New York Times article since the report of Lanxiang[1], which became a popular meme on Chinese social networks.<p>1. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/22/technology/22cyber.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/22/technology/22cyber.html</a>
I see this in YouTube comments a lot on Hong Kong-related videos. Also they flag videos. A Cantonese language YouTuber I follow posted one video with her opinions and got flagged and hit with a strike on her account.
They go by the name 50 Cent party: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party</a><p>This is purely something that's pushing a political agenda. In China, there's a single party, so disagreement is perceived as sabotage. While in other countries, its accepted as part of the system.<p>In US we have a house/senate minority leader: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minority_leader" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minority_leader</a><p>In Westminster-based systems (Australia, Canada, UK), they call them opposition: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentary_opposition" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentary_opposition</a><p>So if China lacks this representation, what is there to counterbalance? Wouldn't it lead to viewpoint discrimination?<p>There are things that need a more direct form a democracy to fix. Rent control, tighter restrictions on who does business/runs for election there. For instance, should agents of Beijing be fit to represent the people of HK and craft laws?<p>If you'd like to see what happens when foreign governments sabotage legislature, Poland's first legislative councils were rampant with it: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Poland_in_the_Early_Modern_era_(1569%E2%80%931795)" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Poland_in_the_Early...</a><p>What other outlet is there but giving control to HK citizens have total and complete sovereignty to handle their own localized issues?
We gotta stop blaming `China` -- The China brand has been tarnished unfairly in my view as we use it to be synonymous with the so-called `Communist Party of China`
There needs to be some sort of internet sanction where the offending country's internet access to the world is cut off until they start acting like good global citizens.