Community > Entertainment and Television

Much of the TLJ hatred was by Russian bots

<< < (2/5) > >>

Askold:
Decades ago Soviet spies used conspiracies to sow dissent and distrust in USA. They infiltrated conspiracy theorist groups and spread claims and falsified evidence of the US government being behind JFK assassination.

...Nowadays they do the same by telling nerds that they should hate girls in movies and games.

niam2023:
Russian Agent: Next I will get them angry about the political implications of censorship in the Goblin Slayer anime. I am a very serious agent provocateur.

Askold:
The crazy part is that their current methods are more effective than the old ones.

People who thought that the US government is killing US presidents didn't do much good but angry nerds who hate women are an internet army that harasses people non-stop and votes for foreign agents just to piss off "Libtards."

Chaos Undivided:
Homie, I'm gonna be blunt: this study doesn't prove jack shit. And I'm gonna tell you why.

Morten Bay started by taking a sample tweets addressed directly to Rian Johnson about TLJ. He divided the tweets into positive and negative ones. Then he exclusively examined the negative ones to categorize them. So far, nothing too bad. One could ask if his sample was the most representative, but there isn't really anything that would ruin the study's credibility.

That comes next.

Bay grouped the tweets into three categories: politically motivated, trolls/Russians/bots, and real angry fans. How did he identify members of the first group? He looked at their tweet history and saw if they ever used the terms "Trump" or "SJW". Yeah, really. Tweeting about certain topics is enough to brush somebody off as politically motivated.

To identify members of the second group, Bay used post frequency, retweet rate, other tweet content, and command of English. For the record, this is considered an example of a troll tweet:


--- Quote from: @MarcoSo94862885 ---So, now explain why Mark Hamil didn't like Luje in TLJ?
--- End quote ---

Yes, understandable typos are used as evidence of trolling. I have trouble remembering how to spell some surnames, and "k" and "j" are right next to each other on the keyboard. Not to mention that he himself made a typo:


--- Quote from: Morten Bay ---The simplicity and brevity of the language, as well as the fact that this purported Star Wars fan doesn’t spell “Hamill” or “Luke” correctly, are all indicators that raises suspicions.
--- End quote ---

Should we assume Bay's a Russian troll because he made a mistake in subject-verb agreement? I say no. Nor should we assume it of people who misspell names. But even assuming he's right, how many people did he determine were bots or trolls?


--- Quote from: Morten Bay ---Using the Botometer mentioned in the Method section, 11 out of the of 206 accounts expressing negative sentiments were identified as bots. I identified 33 of the 206 negative accounts as trolls and/or sock puppets.
--- End quote ---

Only 44. And of those 44, he determined that only 16 were Russian:


--- Quote from: Morten Bay ---16 of these 33 troll/sock puppet accounts appear to be Russian trolls, or at least possess several of the Russian troll characteristics presented above.
--- End quote ---

In other words, the study determined that less than 10% of the negative tweets were by Russian bots. So even taking the study at face value, Russia played only a minor role in the backlash.

This study ain't worth the bandwidth it takes up, except maybe as an object lesson in what not to do. For the record, I'm a transport inspector with no formal training in this stuff, so when I can find such glaring flaws in his methodology, something is wrong.

If you liked TLJ, fine. Nothing wrong with that. I got better things to worry about than other peoples' taste in movies. Just don't try and say there aren't legit reasons to dislike it.

niam2023:
The backlash primarily came from literal human garbage that has no business in prominence.

But then, we've dealt with guys who carry water for salty, bigoted nerdwads before.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page

Go to full version