Soup 263, February 6, 2024
Trolls and bots on X
In today’s #vatniksoup, I’ll discuss about X’s massive problem with social media manipulation, paid shills, bots, and trolls.
Due to the upcoming US election in November 2024 and Elon’s disregard of the problem, X is seeing more trolls and bots than ever before.
Due to the upcoming US election in November 2024 and Elon’s disregard of the problem, X is seeing more trolls and bots than ever before.
Like all other social media platforms, pre-Elon Twitter was struggling with a massive problem with automated accounts (bots) and paid shills (trolls). But it was doing MUCH better than other platforms, and the company actually had one of the best safety teams around.
One of Elon’s early broken promises was that if his bid for Twitter succeeds, the team will “defeat the spam bots or die trying!” He also promised to “authenticate all real humans”. Of course, none of this happened, and the changes he made only made trolls more effective.
Today, there’s probably more active troll farms than ever before. And it has become a lucrative business available for anyone and in every language. For example, China, Russia, India, Philippines, Nigeria, Israel and Ghana offer extensive social media manipulation services.
The services offered range from unsophisticated like automatically registered accounts, to more sophisticated like manually registered & hacked accounts that can then be padded with custom, often political, content. Other factors include age & verification of the account(s).
Suppliers of these services also offer automation software, that can be used to control bulk subscriptions, likes, shares and follows. They can also be used to post comments en masse in a manner that they can’t be detected by social media platforms.
The most common strategy on social media manipulation is the Russian style of online propaganda, “Firehose of falsehood”, which prioritizes quantity over quality, and tries to overwhelm any competing narratives on the topic. This strategy is now being used by most countries.
Another common approach of troll farms is called “astroturfing”. This deceptive practice tries to present an orchestrated marketing or PR campaign so that it seems “grassroots” and organic. In addition to troll farms, astroturfing is used by companies and brands.
Online manipulation campaigns often focus on big events, such as elections. It’s very difficult to control the flow of information, and that’s why authoritarian regimes often focus on limiting the Internet rather than trying to fight the swarm of trolls and their campaigns.
This is why the online information war can be considered asymmetric — Western democracies and especially the US hold free speech in high regard, whereas the authoritarian and totalitarian regimes see them as a threat and will do anything to limit it.
Let’s look at the upcoming US presidential elections — Today, these paid shills swarm any topic revolving around Joe Biden, Nikki Haley, Donald Trump, and Tucker Carlson. They are also promoting ideas of a civil war in the US, and the secession of Texas.
Now, there are some giveaway signs for trolls, but they’re not bulletproof. Researchers have found that Russian troll farms often stop working during Russian holidays. These accounts also use culture-specific talking points, like “warm water ports” in the case of Texas.
And with the help of generative AI interfaces like ChatGPT, we’ll see less and less bad grammar in the future. AI solutions also allow auto-generation of content, as you can see by using the search term “as it goes against OpenAI’s use case policy”.
But not all troll farms are of course Russian, and not all of them focus solely on the West. They’ve been used extensively in the elections in the Arab world, and even firebrand pastors, dentists, pet food businesses and health gurus have utilized them to gain popularity.
Troll farms are also used to artificially bloat accounts that spread specific narratives. For example, @JoeyMannarinoUS was steadily losing followers until he had a big spike after mid-January 2024. This huge increase is probably as fake as his hairline.
In addition to being difficult to counter, social media manipulation is also extremely cheap. After it became a global phenomenon and business, the price of buying likes, shares and comments has become a viable and cheap strategy for any government or organization.
As you may have noticed, there’s an ongoing manipulation campaign that focuses heavily on endorsing Trump to become the next president of the US. I’d imagine, that this would be supported by troll farms in most authoritarian regimes, including the Kremlin and the CCP.
So, expect to see much more “Texian patriots”, BBQ dads, football fans, concerned citizens, warm water port enjoyers, “unvaxxed mothers/wives”, free speech advocates and humble Christians, and then watch them disappear after the US election in November 2024.
And all this is of course no problem to @elonmusk (who has me muted btw). He’s showed strong opposition to Biden’s policies, and the millions of bots buying blue and gold ticks probably keep his platform afloat.
So, don’t expect many changes in the near future.
So, don’t expect many changes in the near future.
Now, there are some accounts that try to find patterns in usernames, behavior, etc. This is important work, but one should remember that there are probably thousands of troll farms around the world, some more sophisticated than others, making them difficult…
…to detect without proper tools. Twitter had these tools before, but Elon conveniently removed them, probably to make more money and to prevent researchers from doing deep dives on the data. But you can still buy the full toolset for around 2, 5 million USD annually.
