Are you chatting with a pro-Israeli AI-powered superbot?
Are you chatting with a pro-Israeli AI-powered superbot?
Smart bots have emerged as an unexpected weapon in Israel’s war on Gaza. Al Jazeera looks at bots and how to spot them.
Before they had bots, they had the Act.il app.
People could submit random social media comments/posts that were critical of Israel, and if you went to that site and commented, you got "points" that could be redeemed for gift cards.
Not much money, but it was all online so people from a lower income country could make decent money off it compared to local employment.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ishmaeldaro/act-il-social-media-astroturfing-israel-palestine
After blow back they delisted the app
Now I think it's just a website instead.
It's good people are finally talking about all the propaganda Israel puts out tho. But it's not a new development. They're just switching from humans in poverty to AI.
Hell, we're probably better off if they think AI can do as good of a job at this as humans.
Quick edit:
Mentioning the act.il app on Reddit used to get you banned from a lot of the major news/politics subs
So it was really hard to talk about.
I remember reading there was something like this back in the mid/late 00s too, maybe without the giftcards but you could sign up for email alerts when there was a forum thread that needed to be brigaded, long before even reddit was a thing.
Edit: read about it on Metafilter at the time but it seems to have been purged. If you're interested maybe the post is findable on the Internet Archive
Or the pro-Russia AI-powered Superbot Or the pro-China AI-powered Superbot Or the pro-India AI-powered Superbot . . . .
Reminder that almost 10 years ago, Reddit accidentally released that their most "reddit-addicted" city was Eglin Airforce Base, which has multiple Cyberspace units.
If any government is trying to influence you on an american-based english-speaking websites, it's the American government.
That's non sequitur. And doesn't really even pass basic critical thinking tests. The government which has outsized control of all television radio and print media in the United States. Is really spending that much time and effort to propagandize to Americans on an international platform already heavily skewed fascist and right wing? Just because they ran ML off doesn't mean it was some sort of government psyop. A lot of people even on the left. Don't like Marxist leninists for good reasons.
Social media is one of the current best vectors for finding influence in the United states. If the US government really is using it to propagandize the people. They're doing such a poor job of it I don't think we really have anything to worry about from our governments propagandizing at all.
Nearly half the American voting population has a more favorable outlook on a foreign fascist dictator than they do our own president. And a large chunk of that current government is actively seeking to hurt American Allies and destroy the country's power at large. Talk about a propaganda fail.
No the more likely explanation is that they're pissing against a tide of a foreign misinformation. And having just about as much success as pissing against the ocean.
Unpopular opinion: "the other side is just bots" is the new "the other side is just paid protestors."
Bot warfare is a very real and very serious form of information warfare but the idea that any particular political actor is using it disproportionately is pretty difficult to prove. This article, for example, identifies a study which found a third of internet traffic is made up of "bad bots." The study shows that the VAST majority of bad bot traffic is targeting Gaming (virtual currency farming), IT (DDoS), and Data Scraping, with propaganda bots making up less than 2%.
One quibble: it ain't new. I've been accused of being a bot on /r/conspiracy for well over a decade.
But my response has long since been the same: does it matter? Whether I'm a bot has absolutely zero bearing on the truth of what I'm saying. Don't get me wrong, we should definitely do something to curb botting, but I agree with you: if you find yourself using it as a reason to dismiss an argument you're just relying on a garbage ad hominem.
I checked the report, but it seems at no point it seems to clarify what they consider "bot traffic". Is it measured in api calls, page views, or bytes? Generally the term traffic is meant as raw data transported, but in that context those numbers make no sense.
For example, one of the biggest traffic consumers in the Internet is video streaming. There's no way in hell that half, or even a tenth, of that data is fake - it would simply cost too much to waste it on bots. Both for the bot owners as well as the streaming providers.
This level of vagueness and lack of transparency (what do the numbers mean, and where do they come from) does not fill me with confidence on this report.
I'd say it's unpopular because we have a lot of evidence to the contrary. We know for a fact that a large amount of traffic on Twitter and other social media sites are bots. We know for a fact that many political actors are paid. The problem is the people complaining about it most tend to be the ones who use them the most. Casting aspersions against those who don't. All in an effort to confuse and muddy the waters so no one questions their use.
The same for fake news. People crying about the most are the ones who put out the most. That doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Even if the accusations are often false
Realistically any group would be foolish not to take advantage of something like Bots or AI to help Drive their message. Even if it's true.
We should just never take anyone screaming accusations at face value though.
Nice try, propaganda bot.
Unpopular opinion: “the other side is just bots” is the new “the other side is just paid protestors.”
That's literally what's happening here...
They use to pay people thru an app to do this, now they use bots...
Like, I got called a racist once for telling another white employee that if they wanted the admin leave for an office holiday party, they had to stay at work till it started.
That obviously doesn't make me a racist, but if you put on an Obama mask and started making monkey noises... That's still racist, even tho that old guy called me racist for not letting him leave before the holiday party started.
No, bots are more humane
you obviously didn't talk to Tay.
So many people and politicians are falling for bots already. I think it's too late, because at the same time most lost the will to care. If no one cares, things get worse.