It is really hard to use social media to measure public opinion, even if Twitter/X doesn’t have nearly as much security or influence capabilities as Facebook/Instagram, botnet accounts run by state-adjacent agencies can still game Twitter’s algorithms by emulating human behavior and upvoting specific posts in order to game Twitter’s newsfeed algorithm for the human users.
Social media has never been an environment that is friendly to independent researchers; if it was easy, then foreign intelligence agencies would run circles around independent researchers in order to research advanced strategies to manipulate public opinion (e.g. via their own social media botnets, or merely just knowing what to say when their leaders give speeches).
But yes. E/acc seems to be really fired up about this.
E/acc seems to be really fired up about this:
https://twitter.com/ctjlewis/status/1725745699046948996
It is really hard to use social media to measure public opinion, even if Twitter/X doesn’t have nearly as much security or influence capabilities as Facebook/Instagram, botnet accounts run by state-adjacent agencies can still game Twitter’s algorithms by emulating human behavior and upvoting specific posts in order to game Twitter’s newsfeed algorithm for the human users.
Social media has never been an environment that is friendly to independent researchers; if it was easy, then foreign intelligence agencies would run circles around independent researchers in order to research advanced strategies to manipulate public opinion (e.g. via their own social media botnets, or merely just knowing what to say when their leaders give speeches).
But yes. E/acc seems to be really fired up about this.