Posted on 12/16/2018 2:14:30 PM PST by Olog-hai
Many German lawmakers were flooded with messages during the recent debate on the UN migration pact, in what appeared to be the work of social media bots, said Ralph Brinkhaus, the head of the parliamentary group of the ruling conservative CDU party.
The emails “often had same blocs of texts”, Brinkhaus told Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung in an interview published on Sunday.
“But most of all, this wave of untruths and defamation was unleashed online and on social media,” he added, urging a series of measures to fight disinformation.
On social media, a “bot” is a label used for automated programs that mimic real users. The software elements can be programmed to like, share, and even post comments on specific posts, creating the illusion that the content is popular or hotly debated. […]
Following the UN migration debate in Germany, a Berlin start-up Botswatch found 28 percent of all tweets on this topic were sent by bots. These campaigns can now wield “monstrous power,” according to Brinkhaus. They interfere with key elements of democracy, such as free forming of opinions, and can shift crucial votes to one side of the argument, says the lawmaker. […]
German conservatives have long been mulling the possibility of forcing social media platforms to clearly mark bot accounts and individual messages sent by automated software routines, according to the politician. …
(Excerpt) Read more at dw.com ...
The emails “often had same blocs of texts”...
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One might say the same of the broadcasts on NBC/CBS/ABC/CNN/MSNBC
Yup!
We all have a limited amount that we can read. Could you give us a brief idea of what these bots are saying?
Those bots were on overdrive from the left supporting “Net Neutrality” last year...but the media said it was all legit.
One could say “bots’ colluded in 2016 from all enemies of the Republic domestic and foreign. If I could, I would destroy the social media giants yesterday for what they did and what they do. Hiding behind the First Amendment is no excuse.
George Orwell warned us via his dystopian novel, “1984.”
Orwell knew not future technology but was pretty accurate in his vision of such. 1984 is here and now. Orwell was right. He knew what we would do with this technology.
Oddly the thing Orwell got wrong was his vision was a centralized oppressive government, which we do have. He did not envision a politicized non government such as google, Microsoft, Facebook, etc. as and integral part of government suppression of the free flow of ideas and truth. On that point Ann Ryand got it exactly correct in her great and also dystopian novel, “Atlas Shrugged.”
Damn shame Ann Ryand was not married to Orwell. The book they could have written together would have been the best of both and exceeding boths individual and great talents.
I wonder if they ever meet each other? It would have been a conversation most worthy of listening too.
How is this different than robocalls or mass mailings, for example? Sounds like it’s just politicians wanting to regulate criticism against themselves.
Oddly he was wounded in Spain not by Franco's troops but by other Marxist factions fighting for supremacy within the Marxist factions. It made an impression on Orwell's thinking.
want =s what
I have stupid fingers on the keyboard.
Bots and paid human trolls infest comments of most online media now. FR is the exception, and CTH. But they’ve taken over disqus and others.
Media Matters does this a lot.
It would be nice to have a law that tags all paid trolls, and bots. I doubt 1st ammendment issue would get in the way, if carefully crafted. Merge it into a duplicate of the EU data law. Where YOU own your data, and must “opt in” for any collection. Along with “The Right to be Forgotten.”
Gulag, fakebook, and twitter are completely against such a movement, and have paid off every lawmaker who can be bought already. Which is most of them. It would take a big grassroots effort to get that all done, correctly.
They’re already heading it off at the pass, by quietly writing a seriously wattered down bill to give them cover. It’s being worked on right now, quietly. B friken S!!!
Ok, I read that article, and it does NOT support what you said. Not even close. In fact, it largely shows it does insure privacy, and companies are struggling to cope. Good.
My points still stand. We need a US version of GDPR, and while they’re at it, expose paid trolls and bot posts.
You didn’t read the article I linked, I see.
BTW, the GDPR is not about regulating bots either.
Bots cannot touch a website that blocks them on the robots.txt file. This has been the case for decades.
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