More than 90% of the bots are Pro-Ukrainian, with fewer than 7% pro-Russian

https://arxiv.org/abs/2208.07038

by ShivShankaran • 4 years ago

67 41 4 years ago

arxiv.org

metadat• 4 years ago

Why is this surprising or newsworthy? Putin is the villain.. straight up.

Edit: thx for the drive-by downvote feedback, would appreciate if you'd engage directly if I'm missing something

ShivShankaran3• 4 years ago

A play by play approach of US that it did in Syria https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2016/02/22/is-there-ac...

Note that this person from NATO who wrote this nytimes article asking to arm ISIS with anti-aircraft is now the content director of reddit.

t6jvcereio• 4 years ago

Good? NATO is on the right side of this.

superchroma• 4 years ago

The US didn't force Russians to shoot... checks notes sorry, no, brutally torture and execute civilians and level entire towns. They did that all on their own.

subjectsigma4• 4 years ago

I read the abstract but not the paper. If it's accurate, it is an incredibly surprising result. We already know the Russians are pros at manipulating social media for the purposes of HUMINT, propaganda, etc. If they only represent 7% of bots, that means that:

1. Another actor, possibly a nation-state, is putting even more resources than Russia is into shaping the narrative,

2. Russia isn't actually trying very hard manipulate the narrative this time around.

Both these scenarios are new and somewhat frightening. If #1 - what is the motivation? Who is doing it? If #2 - why would they abandon a previously successful strategy? Where did they redirect those resources to? Are they up to something even worse?

None of this discussion requires you to be pro-Putin, which is what you seemed to imply. Your comment is being down-voted because it criticizes while lacking any sort of imagination or insight.

AnimalMuppet2• 4 years ago

Or 3. Western media got a lot better at filtering out Russian disinformation and propaganda, once the put their minds to it.

I'm not sure I entirely believe that. The Russians aren't amateurs.

ShivShankaran3• 4 years ago

https://www.sun-sentinel.com/opinion/fl-op-viewpoint-aregood...

"We're forever scarred by the Vietnam War, and the lies "

https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cg...

I wasn't born during the vietnam war but there was an article that I read recently on how the media deceived the public about deaths and "trust in american media was lost permanently"

The propaganda in this war from all three sides is exceedingly high. We will find out the US propaganda in 10 years or so.

unmole4• 4 years ago

We already know the Russians are pros at manipulating social media

How do we know this?

demetrius2• 4 years ago

I think you're missing the most likely possibility:

3. Russia is operating pro-Ukrainian bots to influence pro-Ukrainian people.

The bots pretend to be pro-Ukrainian but then try to influence the public opinion in the ways that are useful to Russia.

Georgelemental• 4 years ago

I think Russia doesn't care much about narrative war in Western countries, they are not going to "win" in that theater anyway. Their propaganda is more focused on their own citizens and third world/non-aligned nations. However, it serves certain political groups to exaggerate how much Russian propaganda there is in the West (in order to justify censorship).

As for who is spreading pro-Ukrainian propaganda, I would guess either Ukraine (most obvious motive) or USA or UK (have the intelligence agencies/know-how). Possibly also a countries like Saudi Arabia or Azerbaijan that benefit economically from the war?

AnimalMuppet2• 4 years ago

I think what you're missing is that "who's the villain" has no relevance whatsoever to "who the bots side with". They're orthogonal axes.

rvz• 4 years ago

Here we go again. Finding the villain of the year. This year it is Putin, Trump last year, etc pushed by the media and its propaganda.

Anything that goes against it like this paper is upsetting those who believe what the media says and does and doesn't question their views or stories either.

It can spread from bots on either side and with that you need to question both views on who is spreading their propaganda to distort reality to suit their target audience.

ShivShankaran3• 4 years ago

2005, Modi was the villian and banned from US https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-narendra-modi-was-banned-fr...

Followed by Saddam, then it was Assad, then it was Gaddafi Then it was little rocket man. 2019 it was Xi. 2020 it was Trump.

2022 it's Putin.

I am taking bets on who the propaganda is going to nominate in 2023. Nominees are: Saudi Arabia MBS, Iran Ali Kamanei, Imran Khan, Modi (again), North Korea (again), Solomon Islands (because they snubbed US and denied entry to US ships)

https://www.stripes.com/theaters/asia_pacific/2022-08-25/sol...

NicoJuicy2• 4 years ago

Obviously the villain in this case is the one that surrounded a country with military force and tried to invade it and burning it to the ground in some areas.

Don't forget about all those displaced families too.

r7212• 4 years ago

We use Botometer to quantify the extent of bot activity in the dataset by assigning scores to a random sample of accounts

legitster• 4 years ago

This shouldn't be surprising. The purpose of most bots are to blend into normal populations. Which is why the most followed accounts by bots are like... Obama or Lady Gaga.

createdapril24• 4 years ago

"The balanced category contained 3.04% of accounts, showing that accounts exhibiting mixed behaviour are present in the dataset."

This set of accounts is actually the most interesting to me. The Pro-either-side bots are going to be relatively easy to attribute, and if you are following the war closely you can have a very good guess as to which propaganda narratives they are going to magnify (and therefore predict their content).

The 3.04% accounts may be trying to build a online profile that is more "trustworthy" so that it can be used later, may be trying to counter disinformation (as opposed to "counter disinformation with disinformation" - which is almost always what it means when you hear politicians talk about it), or may be trying to do something subtle and specific. It's also much harder to attribute.

geenew• 4 years ago

Am I reading it wrong, or does the article say that 90% of _accounts_ are pro-Ukrainian, 7% pro-Russian?

Section 3.0 describes how they got the dataset (all tweets in a timeframe with a "#IStandWith[Ukraine|Russia|Zelynskyy|Putin]" hashtag).

Section 3.1 describes how they assign national 'lean' to the accounts in their entire dataset; that's the section that has the 90%/7% numbers.

Section 3.2 describes how they quantify bot activity in their dataset, using a program called BotoMeter to apparently run regression on accounts in the dataset.

Section 4 gives the average botometer scores by national lean. This is the oddest of all, since the botometer scores for both sides are roughly equal.

It seems to imply that Ukraine and Russia both had bot armies that were roughly equal in proportion to the total number of accounts favouring their national camp, despite the huge disparity in the size of the national camps (90% vs 7%). Which seems odd.

[Edit: to clarify: I may have missed it but the paper doesn't seem to give a clear statement on %bot/country anywhere.]

All this article really does is make me curious about botometer accuracy and the usefulness of a 'IStandWith*' filter for doing a study like this.

r7212• 4 years ago

There was some criticism of Botometer in previous bot discussions:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32361296

p6way2• 4 years ago

Russian bots got into the arxiv, how much does it cost?

NicoJuicy2• 4 years ago

I think Russia severely underestimated what the emigration of millions of people do to other countries.

Of course they won't be pro-Russian, they had to stay in a bunker during multiple months for safety ( a neighbor is from Ukraine)

HereIGoAgain• 4 years ago

This is really a surprise to anyone? Russia may have more resources than Ukraine, but pretty much the entire world is on the latter's side. Especially social and major media.

Bots are one of the reason that NO social media should ever be used to get "public opinions" on anything! Not just via likes/votes either!

tenpies2• 4 years ago

There's a fascinating contrast in strategies:

Ukraine went fast and aggressive with the Ghost of Kiev and Snake Island propaganda. Russia: silence.

And you see it still today. Just this week, Ukraine claimed a pensioner shot down a Russian plane with a rifle. Meanwhile Russia just releases very dry Ministry of Defence updates.

I'm not sure if it's a strategy or a focus on domestic approval over foreign, but it sure is interesting to watch.

p6way2• 4 years ago

I watch Russian news, every evening they show about the killed hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers and liberated cities.

saargrin• 4 years ago

#istandwithPutin is not a hashtag pro-ruZZian propaganda (or anybody else for that matter) uses, so i dont see how this comparison is even making sense except creating clickbait

dang• 4 years ago

This title was heavily editorialized. That's against HN's rules. Accounts that do that eventually lose submission privileges, so please don't do that.

If you want to say what you think is important about an article, that's fine, but do it by adding a comment to the thread. Then your view will be on a level playing field with everyone else's: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

retox• 4 years ago

Why is this flagged?

i_am_jl• 4 years ago

Editorialized headline.

More than 90% of the bots are Pro-Ukrainian, with fewer than 7% pro-Russian

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