"predominate source of trending information is well-meaning individuals and not motivated state-level actors intent on disrupting an election."
What evidence do you have that the predominant source of trending information is motivated state-level actors? That is an incredibly bold statement, and the framing you chose is such that there needs to evidence to the contrary, rather than evidence to support such a claim.
Edit:
A bunch of responses are mistakenly thinking I am denying the presence of Twitter bots created and operated by state actors. I'm not. I'm arguing with the incredibly bold statement that they are the PREDOMINANT SOURCE of trending information.
> What Twitter did was at best unethical, but ironically, severely tampering with our election…
Huh? Twitter does not administer US elections last I checked. I am sure people could read this hugely consequential information you're claiming on Reddit, 4chan, OANN, AM radio, Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, or various other outlets that right-leaning voters typically seem to use. In fact, I seem to recall all of those running several stories about it at the time.
Or are you claiming that Twitter is the sole source of media that the entire United States consumes?
>Twitter's technicality is a fig leaf to enable continued control of public discourse by an unelected private industry that is 9-to-1 in the tank for Democrats and can decide what Americans are allowed to know.
in the headline. Yes, thank you, I reject this authors "fact synthesis".
> CNN will retain a power to mislead far in excess of Twitter bots.
The major mistake here is thinking that these two things are mutually exclusive competition. They're not.
In 2015, an internet rumor started spreading that Obama was going to invade Texas. This rumor was based on the fact that there was a routine military training exercise taking place in Bastrop called Jade Helm. It started on Facebook and was quickly picked up by the mass media. These rumors became so viral that the Texas governor activated the Texas State Guard "just in case".[1]
Later, the US government alleged that this was a planned disinformation operation carried out by the Russians and was a precursor to later operations.[0]
Twitter and Facebook started the conspiracy, but mass media laundered it and made it look real enough to get a governor to act.
If all policitians' twitter accounts required that all their statements submitted a "predictive model" to reinforce their tweet - then at least your argument would make logical sense.
In this case, it just seems like Twitter disagrees with him. They aren't really arguing facts.
Ignoring the vast research showing that fake news spread on Twitter correlates with voting intentions for the moment there are more direct ways of showing immediate election influence: the number of candidates who have withdrawn from elections after something happened on Twitter.
[1] is a recent example. To quote:
> Leading Florida Democrats are walking back their endorsement of Naomi Blemur after past Facebook posts showed the Agriculture Commissioner candidate calling abortion a sin and promoting or defending anti-gay comments.
> Screenshots shared on Twitter showed a history of social media comments that some Democrats are calling “anti-choice” and “homophobic.” Prominent Democrats began retracting their endorsements or denouncing Blemur after her post history came to light.
To say that Twitter has no power to influence elections is demonstrably false when information shared on Twitter led directly to endorsements being withdrawn.
>People on Twitter, including candidates for office, may not claim an election win before it is authoritatively called. To determine the results of an election in the US, we require either an announcement from state election officials, or a public projection from at least two authoritative, national news outlets that make independent election calls.
Given how poorly the national news outlets performed on this the last presidential race, Twitter should really just limit this to state election official only.
“Anyone who claims that automated spam accounts that tweeted about the U.S. election had an effect on voters’ opinions or influenced the national Twitter conversation clearly underestimates voters and fails to understand how Twitter works,” said Nick Pacilio, a Twitter spokesman.
I agree with this sentiment from later in the article
I have nearly everyone in that Twitter thread blocked and labeled as political propaganda trolls. I suggest you be more critical of your information sources.
> How the Biden laptop story was framed and shut down just before the election.
Twitter had/has a rule to not allow hacked data. Nothing to do with any government interfering as you implied.
> How it was a concerted effort between FBI, big tech and media done behind the scene.
Hunters laptop story? No it did not show how it was a concerted effort of those parties. Blocking that story on twitter was twitters doing with no input on it from any government agencies. As far as that story goes twitter was blocking links to articles from media. What you are suggesting is that media wrote the stories and then worked with twitter to block those same stories....
> If that is nothing new, what a joke is the election process?
You said that we should read twitter files but it seem you haven't read them.
"Like the other false claims about voter fraud, Mr. Trump’s tweet included a label by Twitter that he was sharing information that was not accurate.
Twitter, like Facebook, has said that those labels help prevent false claims from being shared and direct people toward more authoritative sources of information.
Earlier this week, BuzzFeed News reported that Facebook employees questioned whether the labels were effective."
super creepy- and another reminder that there are so many influential people that want to see anyone they don't agree with de-platformed
> Trump extensively uses Twitter for his own propaganda might underline that fact.
Him and how many other hundreds of millions of other users, using Twitter for its primary purpose.
If 'Twitter sold ads to Russia and <candidate> used Twitter to promote their own propaganda' is the baseline for collusion with Russia to influence the election then that would make every single presidential candidate guilty of collusion also.
> Trump used Twitter to organize the overthrow of the US government and almost succeeded at it.
The Capitol riots? It was most definitely agent provocateurs who infiltrate every protest to justify actions against the protestors. Twitter just used it as an excuses to get rid of Trump to please their friends.
“But a surprisingly high number are requests by the FBI for Twitter to take action on election misinformation, even involving joke tweets from low-follower accounts.”
Right in the first article it says "they are still unraveling whether large numbers of computer-generated tweets can really sway policies or elections—and how such influence might be countered."
They don't really have any evidence.
I know it was a big subject, mainly driven by the left to somehow rationalize why Hillary lost. It's just a narrative.
- A embarrassing "strategy" document came out in the public domain that was attributed to the main opposition party. The doc might or might not be true.
- A govt minister of the ruling party tweeted it
- The opposition party wrote to Twitter claiming the document is fake and the Tweet should be flagged.
- Twitter intervened and flagged the tweet by the minister as referring to manipulated media.
Two questions:
- Why does Twitter get to mediate and be judge/jury/enforce on a political feud between two parties in a sovereign nation
- Twitter has let many tweets stand in the past referring to demonstrably false documents so there is a very overt demonstration of bias. The opposition party is a leftist party which has failed to win any general elections.
What evidence do you have that the predominant source of trending information is motivated state-level actors? That is an incredibly bold statement, and the framing you chose is such that there needs to evidence to the contrary, rather than evidence to support such a claim.
Edit: A bunch of responses are mistakenly thinking I am denying the presence of Twitter bots created and operated by state actors. I'm not. I'm arguing with the incredibly bold statement that they are the PREDOMINANT SOURCE of trending information.
reply