So there's a delusional take you see on twitter Etc. All the time. From both sides of almost any issue but especially anything related to Russia, elections, Etc. You see people who respond to normal criticism or an abundance of criticism (usually relatively earned by how bad their takes are) accusing their detractors or those who disagree of being bots or astroturfed Putin or Clinton agents... The implied premise being that only lumps of code or Chinese sweatshop workers employed by bad faith actors could hold views that disagree with the complainer. That only bots or paid shills could oppose Ukraine, or support Clinton over Bernie, or Biden over Trump... Etc.
I used to dismiss these complaints... but now I feel I might owe a general apology.
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I've noticed since TheMotte moved to its new Site that the Quality of a lot of Comments are just off. Not that the takes are bad or low quality or have odd opinions But that they're Bizarrely and Unnervingly detached from even the barest context of the discussion itself. Stuff completely out of character for even a bad rulebreaking poster on the motte.
Short comments that don't engage with any arguments presented, or even engage with the context of the discussion... but that Immediately tangent off on some culture war point utterly unrelated to the discussion, and then not engaging wit any replies (often with a single external link)... I've seen weird shit on twitter so I've dug into a few of these accounts... and all of their comments are like this, short snipes that never engage even 1 or 2 comments deep with anyone who replies. but that are slowly wracking up a history on the platform...
And then today I was hit by a smoking gun, this Comment:
“The Ukraine conflict is one of the clearest examples of good vs. evil in the past century"
You said it! Look at how despicable these people are!
Video: Ukraine Soldiers Sing Praises Of WW II Era Nazi: https://youtube.com/watch?v=4H-yMmNh5Cs
And now NPR is just casually rehabilitating the Nazis: https://www.npr.org/2022/03/03/1084113728/a-closer-look-at-the-volunteers-who-are-signing-up-to-fight-the-russians
Now the links are to real pieces of media, The Jimmy Dore Show and NPR... both respectable enough... and there'd be little to suggest this was a bot trying to manipulate the discussion... except for one thing:
No one had said the quote he was replying too...
Indeed I know where he got the quote. It was from a discussion/long take weeks before in relation to Ukraine, and would not even have fit the discussion in that piece, since it was a meta-discussion about how figures discuss Ukraine relative to other wars. I'd quoted it back then as an example of something we'd think was delusional and completely detached from intellectual rigor if said about Iraq 1991 or WW1...
Indeed another comment making the opposite argument used the same quote and drew other quotes from the same two week old discussion... except arguing the opposite way (pro-Ukraine)... And likewise replied not at all to having it pointed out that nothing they quoted was at all mentioned in the actual thread or discussion that was being had.
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This obviously killed the discussion in that thread... when half the thread becomes comments quoting things, points and arugments, that were never said, and the other half must become replies saying in effect WTF!?
Well you can't have a discussion any more. Any organic back and forth between actual mottizens was killed. And obviously none of these either schizos or bots responded to keep discussion going.
Now if this becomes the norm it will kill the space...
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But its also really unnerved me with regards to the rest of the internet.
The "Dead Internet Theory" doesn't feel like a theory anymore. The Motte is an obscure space with discussion levels high enough you notice if an actor isn't actually thinking or engaging with what's been said... and 2 out of 15 comments in that thread were Fairly undeniably bots....
On a site that's only been up a few months.
What the hell must it be like on other forums? Newspaper comments? YouTube comments?
Hell 4Chan had to implement Capchas for every comment to avoid the problem.
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Notes -
On my anti-Ukraine comment, I got a reply from one poster whose English was highly unnatural and who only ever replied on the forum 20 days before, for a previous discussion on Ukraine. He also criticized the forum for posting about “transsexuals”, a give-away that he is not familiar with the discussions (which always use trans or transgender) and that he would have no interest in browsing themotte simply waiting for Ukraine to come up. I thought that was, not a bot, but someone pinged out of the West of Ukraine because their google search for forums about Zelensky came up. I have no evidence, and it’s not like his content was low quality, so I don’t exactly care much. (If you’re not, apologies, but I think some doubt is warranted.)
I think the sad reality of discussions on Russia and Ukraine is that we know it is littered with Ukrainian and Russian bots and paid agents who are pinged from indexed search engines to participate in these discussions. There’s nothing you can do about it and there will usually never be any proof. I can’t imagine any way to substantively combat the problem, let alone on a small forum.
Now how dare you.
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It's certainly not that people disagree with you, they are just bots. And that is certainly suspicious that they are not very interested in discussion of transsexuals when their city is bombed.
Bots participating here might be a thing, but people with your rhetoric certainly lower quality of discussion here. lesswrong and slatestarcodex were heterodox — but they were correct about things. About cryptocurrencies, Artificial Intelligence, COVID. Now, when it comes to geopolitics, freaking worldnews has better takes than the New Right that populates rat-adjacent forums including this one (you might say that I am biased — but compare predictions made there and by people like Karlin).
And yes, I am sure that kulaksrevolt didn't create this post just because article on AA he reposted was subpar, and some people noted it. Oh no, it was because of bots. Possibly from the West of Ukraine.
Worldnews is more interested in bullshit and propaganda than predictions.
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