all 16 comments

[–][deleted] 4 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 2 fun -  (6 children)

So, is he saying he would place a lower bid, or it’s over? He should do this to Reddit next.

[–]neomarxist_bullshit 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

He should have bought Reddit instead. Imagine all the screeching by AHS and tranny admins

[–][deleted] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

The Reeing would be epic.

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Musk said he's still committed to the deal on Twitter. There's a 1 billion breakaway fee, Twitter stock is down 23% from his bid price, and as people have noticed -- Twitter is already doing what he wanted them to do.

If I were Musk I'd at least want a better deal, and if I can bail totally, all the better. I never really liked Twitter though. And I think he view of it as "the townhall of democracy" was colored by his own love of the platform.

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

I don’t even understand how to use it(?). Is the purpose to follow people and read what other people say? That’s so stupid it makes me angry.

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I don’t even understand how to use it(?).

For real, something about that site is just off-putting. But it's only a standard forum really, the UX is just weird. I find it difficult to follow convos on there, so I don't, but for a quick look at what people are saying, it can be handy.

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

A lot of stuff I view, was posted on twitter first. So it’s useful for that.

[–]jet199 4 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 2 fun -  (5 children)

There has been such bad reporting on this.

One in twenty accounts being fake is a huge number.

When you factor in that those bots and shills are posting far more than real people is a massive problem.

[–]magnora7 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

In reality it's probably more like 50% of accounts are fake, rather than one in twenty.

And what's funny is musk might publicly expose all this without having spent a dime, if he backs out of the deal.

[–]soundsituation 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

What I find almost as disturbing as the presence of bots and shills is that most people aren't even aware of them. This is the only forum I visit where it seems like a majority of users understand that social media/news infiltration exists (communities.win might be wise to it too but I'm not there enough to know).

I'm curious as to whether this has also been your experience, and if so, why you think that is.

[–]magnora7 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (2 children)

Yes I agree most people don't realize how common this problem is. And that very lack of public awareness is itself a problem.

4chan is another forum that comes to mind as knowing that there's a high presence of fake posts and glowie posts and so on. I think most people using forums know it goes on to some degree, but they feel they don't have definitive proof of how widespread it is. I guess most internet users would think it's 5% non-organic posts and comments, when in reality it might be 50%.

Most forums' admins and mods are in active denial about this to their users and often themselves, because they want the forum to appear organic so they can attract new users. They want to believe it's all real, because that makes the work worth it. So most new forums like ruqqus, voat, poal, etc all get swamped by bad actors since they have no system to root them out, and then later have to develop a defense mechanism against it (usually too late) which itself creates backlash from the community. Public backlash that the attackers amplify as much as possible. Both the attacks themselves and the public backlash from the bans are a source of instability for the forum itself and the userbase. Ruqqus, voat, and poal all failed because of this exact same development arc. The attackers fracture and infiltrate the community and admin group so badly that the admins give up and everyone quits out of exhaustion and frustration. So taking all this in to account, it's obvious why a typical admin of a typical forum would be motivated to delete all attacks as well as any discussion of attackers. So that's what 95% of forums do. And the forums that don't, often just instead let it take over the whole forum.

Also admins don't want to show any public weakness to attackers, or else attackers might get ideas and new motivations. So basically most admins delete all mentions of it ever, and also never tell anyone details of what's going on for security reasons (and to keep the website looking nice for new users) so the users remain in the dark about what's really happening.

Part of why the saidit community has awareness of it, is because on saidit we allow information about it to exist publicly which creates awareness. Most forums (hackernews, reddit, twitter, GLP, etc) erase all information regarding attackers to remove it from the forum and ban anyone mentioning the attackers or any drama related to it. They 100% remove both the attacks themselves as well as the "the attackers were banned" posts in reaction to it. They basically kill all discussion about it, and would certainly never allow such a thing on the front page, and this is how they maintain the appearance of harmony... and for some forums that have a narrow focus like hackernews, it works. Because this drama is "off topic". On saidit we allow people to air their grievances, as long as they obey the rules, which actually brings light to this sort of activity. This creates awareness. And also most people here on saidit have been banned from reddit at some point, so they're well aware how "curated" of an environment it is because they've run against it firsthand.

Lastly, from a psychological perspective I think most people don't realize how advanced bots are until they see a sub like www.reddit.com/r/GPT3 and see how good the bots have become. Or when they run in to an actual shill group that is undeniably obvious, which is honestly pretty rare if you don't have access to the moderator or admin side of things. Which is another reason a bit of public airing of laundry from time to time is good (as long as it doesn't take over the forum).

Anyway, after some thought, that's my take on the issue. What do you think about it?

[–]soundsituation 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Thanks for the well thought out reply. I think everything you've laid out here makes sense, although despite knowing how curated some sites are I was not aware of how widespread the practice of erasing all discussion of infiltration is. I think that is probably the biggest contributor to the general lack of awareness.

Also admins don't want to show any public weakness to attackers, or else attackers might get ideas and new motivations.

I could be wrong, but I think the list of motivations is quite small and that once you're aware of it you can usually see through the superficially different manifestations.

[–]magnora7 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Glad you see what I'm saying. 5 years ago the cat was out of the bag, just look at my most popular post on reddit ever: https://old.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/5vn4k3/forbescom_reddit_is_being_manipulated_by_big/

But it's taking time for everyone to see how widespread it is, and how many companies and governments are all doing it. It's so cheap compared to traditional advertising, they'd be financially irresponsible not to!

The list of general motivations may be short, but in specific there are many ways to accomplish this goal of destabilizing a site. Like if an admin publicly says in a moment of frustration "x really annoys me but it's not against the rules so I guess I'll have to ignore it" then the attackers will double down on making sure x hits the front page every day. If an admin says to the community "They're DDOSing us bad and it's making us go offline" then they know to double down on the DDOS attacks. And so on, and so on. That's what I mean by "ideas and new motivations". If they know what's working, or where our weak points are, then it just emboldens them. So admins have to be quiet about it to protect the website and the users of the website, but as a side effect it keeps those same users in the dark about what's actually happening.

Overall saidit has done pretty well at dealing with this, compared to sites like ruqqus, voat, and poal. We've still had our fair share of turmoil too, but unlike them we're still standing strong.

[–]hfxB0oyA 3 insightful - 3 fun3 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 3 fun -  (0 children)

I love the typo in the Reuters tweet: "Twitter Incestimated in a filing on Monday..."

After a thorough self-probing, we find ourselves to be pure!

[–]SoCo 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

His work at Twitter is already done, no need to spend money.

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Exactly, I think Twitter jumped the gun on fixing up the company for the new owner before he was the new owner.