We need a tutorial on how to spot a poster who is a bot or agent of a foreign or domestic

[Eliot Rosewater]

enemy of the United States. I am talking about whether we are on Twitter or wherever else there is back and forth discussion of politics.

We also need to realize if we are active on social media, ALL social media, we deal with them, all the time!


So, who here is an expert? On how to identify a bot and what are the memes, talking points of the KGB agents or GOP subversives that post on the internet.

I know bots tend to just post information and not back and forth discussion, right? I suppose almost anything that would be active on a message board, for instance, would not be a bot unless it is just posting links or comments that dont respond to someone?

Do people know when FB is manipulating them?

We need to be taught, I need to learn more about this. We all do.

We now know for a fact how anti American agents talked nonstop about you know who and how she cant be trusted. They are doing it again now about other FEMALE democrats.

Will we learn in time?

[Gothmog]

1. Agreed

If they are pushing stuff that hurts Democrats in general and help trump, then they are a bot or agent

[B2G]

4. That's ridiculous.

Sure, they are out there, but there aren't real people doing this.

[YessirAtsaFact]

28. There was a troll farm in St Petersburg

English speakering Russians made good money pretending to be Americans during the campaign

[B2G]

29. I don't doubt that and I said as much. nt

[Eliot Rosewater]

10. Yes, there are hundreds of russians working on our soil posting on the internet attacking

Democrats, this much we know, when you include GOP it is thousands.

What was that building where they FOUND a russian operation in MD somewhere?

[eleny]

2. I Googled the question, "how to spot an online bot" and got a ton of hits

That might be a good place to start. I'm with you about being in the dark about how to spot them quickly.

[Eliot Rosewater]

6. Yeah, I have done that, bots are more likely effective and present on Twitter, given their

limitations.

Maybe more importantly is how to identify when someone who for instance, does not give TWO SHITS about black people, goes on and on about how they are ignored by a political party, etc.

Or someone who does not give TWO SHITS about gay people goes on and on about how they are treated by some Muslim countries.

Or someone who does not give even ONE SHIT about security talks about someone not protecting their emails who just happens to be a Democrat.

I could go on, but these tactics are used all the time.

[eleny]

14. I get suspicious here sometimes

But I'm concerned that calling someone out may be against DU's TOS. I remember that some time ago it was against the rules to declare that you're deleting a thread because it's suspicious. I can't find it in the TOS now, so maybe things have changed. But I haven't found those sentiments posted.

[Eliot Rosewater]

15. The goal would be people start to learn what the signs are of someone

doing this.

[eleny]

19. Well, that's discussed here routinely so I'm keeping a lookout for any good information

[Eliot Rosewater]

42. I just saw a classic one, I dont DARE point it out of course.

Very similar to the thousands of

calls during ACA debate

"HI, I am a small business owner and I really want to solve this healthcare thing but I think Obamacare is the wrong way to go"

these were all kgb agents or gop operatives, of course

[Qutzupalotl]

3. On twitter, you can post a photo and ask the suspected bot

to describe what’s in it. If they come back with boilerplate messaging and avoid directly answering, report them.

[scheming daemons]

5. Here's a quick tutorial

On twitter:

- If the person has an id that ends in 8 seemingly random digits, AND
- If the person has "MAGA" and "Christian" and "Deplorable" in their twitter profile, AND
- If the person has fewer than 20 followers, AND
- If the person has no profile picture.... or has a picture of a pretty 20-something girl as their profile picture.

They're a bot. Likely Russian.

[Eliot Rosewater]

7. Thanks, now how do we get that information out to the 130 million voters who need to know?

[scheming daemons]

11. Those that would listen are already on our side. Those that are pro Trump would ignore it.

[LeftInTX]

31. That is the real problem!!

[mreilly]

30. Yep, all true...

... if I come across ANY Twitter account with MAGA or Christian or Deplorable I block them IMMEDIATELY. A lot of them also have USA and Patriot in their handles.

Another symptom is "someone" just posting endless memes over and over, many of which are fawning or gushing over how wonderful that pussy-grabbing son of a fucking bitch is.

[mythology]

8. It seems a lot of people go with if the person disagrees with me, they're a troll

I find the best way is to look at someone's links and comments and decide for myself if they are worth listening to. I don't really if they are a troll, a bot, or whatever as it's kind of irrelevant to me. The quality of the content makes something interesting or important. If they are posting crap, I don't generally care ehy. It's the internet. People will say all sorts of stupid things because they are "anonymous".

[Jim Lane]

33. I agree. That's the most popular option.

I doubt that anyone has managed to create a bot that can analyze a thread, find links elsewhere with relevant information, and present responsive content that actually comes to grip with the substance of what's being addressed.

If there were such a bot, would it be a terrible threat to the internet, by making it harder to detect bots? I don't think so. I think a bot like that would be a huge boon to humanity. If I bothered to follow anyone on Twitter, I would follow that bot.

[R B Garr]

37. The problem with your theory is that there are

categories or types of people who refuse to believe real news — like the Russian criminal investigations. Those are now well known and reported facts. That’s a good way to tell if someone is yanking your chain — if they refuse to believe that Russia helped Bernie and Trump to hurt Hillary. Basic facts.

[Coventina]

9. They are safe here at DU. I had a post deleted for calling out an obvious bot.

So, just be warned. If you want to be a member of good standing here, you have to ignore them, not call them out.

[Eliot Rosewater]

12. Not likely "bots" on message boards that interact with you. Per the tutorial right here in this

thread.

What does indeed exist on the internet on any site that has discussion of more than a few people, are full time KGB agents, GOP operatives who pretend to be one thing but who try and make people not vote for dems or not vote at all.


I am not disagreeing with you.

[Coventina]

16. Point taken.

It probably is one of those you mention.

It's extremely disheartening that admin will defend such a person over one of their longest-standing members.

So, I rarely post here anymore.

[ProudLib72]

18. WHAT!? When did this happen?

I have seen only two trolls/bots live and in action on DU. Most of the time they are already deleted when I get to a thread. You are still a member of good standing, Coventina!

[Coventina]

20. Aw thanks!

It was back in December, I think.

I don't remember the name of the poster, but they said that Morrissey was a Trump supporter.

That's about the dumbest, most blatant lie, if you know anything about the man at all.

I said the lie was Russian bot-worthy, and had my post deleted. An appeal to the Admins went unheeded. I figured if that was the level of discourse the Admins want around here, then I don't belong here.

This is the most I've posted here since.....

[ProudLib72]

38. Morrissey is a tRumper?!

Morrissey said he would kill tRump!

[Coventina]

41. Yeah, it was completely ridiculous.

But, their post stood whilst mine was deleted.

Such is DU these days, I guess.



Thanks for the moral support, it means a lot!

[left-of-center2012]

24. Put them on ignore

My "ignore list" grows due to the hate and attack threads.

I expect to be attacked for saying this.

[Tom Rinaldo]

13. Don't be fooled into thinking disruption has to be coherent in a view point

If disruption is the goal than the main technique is to get people at each other's throats, to stoke resentments. Russian bots and the like took contradictory stances. Division is an end in itself.

[melman]

35. Yeah

I love how it's taken as gospel around here that they'd all have a particular point of view.

[concreteblue]

17. Here ya go:

https://botometer.iuni.iu.edu/#!/
"Botometer (formerly BotOrNot) checks the activity of a Twitter account and gives it a score based on how likely the account is to be a bot. Higher scores are more bot-like.
Note the following:
Use of this service requires authenticating with Twitter. For more, see this FAQ.
Botometer often categorizes "organizational accounts", like @BarackObama, as bot accounts.
If something's not working, let us know by tweeting @Botometer.
Botometer is a joint project of the Indiana University Network Science Institute (IUNI) and the Center for Complex Networks and Systems Research (CNetS).
Interested in using Botometer in your application? Check out our API."


https://www.poynter.org/news/bot-or-not-how-tell-if-person-subtweeting-you-real

[LeftInTX]

25. That Botometer site is a probably a bot factory! Beware!

For those who can't see my screenshot, this is what Botometer does:


This application will be able to:

Authorize Bot-o-meter to use your account?
Read Tweets from your timeline.
See who you follow, and follow new people.
Update your profile.
Post Tweets for you.

Good grief!!!!! A bot fighting site is probably a bot producing site itself.
Internet 101.

[concreteblue]

32. Maybe...but...

"Botometer is a joint project of the Indiana University Network Science Institute (IUNI) and the Center for Complex Networks and Systems Research (CNetS)."

[LeftInTX]

34. I ran it to check Donald J. Trump's followers, instead it checked mine!

I've only got two followers.

One is me under another name.
The other is someone that follows me under my other Twitter handle.

It didn't check Trump's, it only checked mine. This thing better not have a bunch of bots following me or retweeting my stuff.....

[concreteblue]

40. ok. THank you

Thank you for your time and bravery. Good info to have.

[LeftInTX]

21. I think most of these twitter handles are bots:

These are Donald Trump's latest twitter followers.

What they do is retweet. Pretty soon real people pick it up and start retweeting too. The tweet gets shared all over. I have no idea how to stop something like this. It is way beyond my capabilities.

A meme can be created by anyone. Karl Rove, Roger Stone, Alex Jones.....etc
They all do this kind of crap. They've been doing this stuff since the beginning of the internet.

[Eliot Rosewater]

23. Excellent help, thanks.

the report options on twitter are limited, i am using "pretending to be someone else" because there is nothing about malicious or bots

[ThoughtCriminal]

22. They all use this font. Right?

[pintobean]

27. But....

it's a bear.

[Marengo]

26. The KGB doesnt exist anymore, at least not formally. IIRC the SVR is responsible for operations...

Outside the Russian Federation.

[melman]

36. I think one way to spot them

is they probably post a lot. Like a lot. They're probably quite strident in presenting themselves in a particular way, but if you really pay attention it's clear they are something else entirely.

[mcar]

39. I presume it will get worse as we get closer to Election Day

So it would be nice to have a primer.