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Comment by mellow-lake-day | Hacker News Reader

I'm speaking for myself here but I think the Russian bots as well as astroturfing bots need to be censored. And not censored by government regulation but by the terms of service. There are many "active measure" Russian bots active on twitter. Twitter doesn't seem concerned at all mostly because those Russian bots are padding their numbers same goes for FB and reddit.

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That sounds all fine and well but half the time I utter a conservative opinion I'm accused of being a "russian bot".

Now the cat is out of the bag, freedom of speech is just a lofty ideal that only worked when all media was controlled by corporations that chose what people listened to most of the time. Now they are trying to put the cat back in the bag. Good for reiterating corporate control over thought and speech.

Corporate and state control but I agree completely.

I agree, but I think there is also another effect at play here, which is the end of private circles where opinions can be exchanged "present company excluded". If you watch old tv, for example, you'll be appalled at the sort of things (harsh, elitist, dismissive of the general opinion) that could be said even in a broadcasted event- the audience was self-selected, recordings were rare and generally unavailable, few were reading any sort of newspaper. People were entitled to unpopular opinions because they had a limited circulation. But today, when everything is recorded, cut and pasted, infinitely available and replayable, every statement made in public must be crafted to be acceptable to absolutely any audience in any context and at any time. Those who contravene the rule are at terrible risk of having their public, work and private life destroyed by public uproar- effectively resulting in a strict censorship of opinions.

If twitter/FB/reddit had done a better job with banning spam bots originating from the GRU offices then you wouldn't be getting called a Russian bot. The effect of Russian bots is multi-pronged because it dilutes the discussion into figuring out whose is a person and who is a bot.

If anybody wants a good article to read on their commute: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/magazine/the-agency.html

This is a 2015 investigative report digging deeper into Russian bots. Attempting to find some answers.

This happens to me too. I think people do this so they can dismiss ideas without having to refute them.

We actually have a good word for this: McCarthyism. If I don't like your opinion, you are a Soviet agent!

That's exactly why they do it.

Not on HN, looking at your comments/submission stream.

It's mostly on twitter or reddit. As a side-note another thing that bugs the shit out of me is when someone looks at my history to find a reason to disregard my comment. (Not accusing you of this by the way)

"Oh I thought I was going to have to respond to you until I discovered you've posted somewhere I don't like."

followed up by a flood of down-votes accusations of being a bot and sometimes a ban when I was posting legit content and previously with a very positive score.

Happened to me twice last month. Once for bringing up the Code of Conduct on /r/linux.

edit: here's a perfect example that made it into print and halfway around the world while the flawed reasoning and debunking has yet to gain traction.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/2/17927696/star-wars-the-la...

followed up by:

https://www.cnet.com/news/actually-half-of-the-last-jedi-hat...

http://monsterhunternation.com/2018/10/02/my-russian-bot-rev...

> half the time I utter a conservative opinion I'm accused of being a "russian bot"

It's not a "conservative" opinion per se, it happens with the left too, (as opposed to (neo)liberal), think Sanders crowd being called sexist/bros by the Clinton crowd etc. Basically if it's not a centrist opinion you're out. It's called the overton window.

Which is why we need to remove their noise from the system. A real debate of ideas is impossible with you have bad-faith actors masquerading as participants.

Spam filtering isn't censorship. It's not censorship when the recipient doesn't want the message. And botspam is spam.

The difference is when you have a message that some of the actual human recipients actually want. Then it isn't spam, it's just information some people disagree with.

If you don't like what someone has to say, don't listen to them. But you have no right to tell someone else they can't.

Are those bots not "behaving civil in the expression of their (masters') beliefs"?

Or do you think they should be censored because they are Russian?

Or because they are bots?

> Or because they are bots?

That one.

Yes! I am OK with only humans having a right to free speech.

Humans express their right to free speech through bots. It's no different from expressing your right to free speech through paid advertisements.

I think I am okay with contents from bots if they are marked like advertisements ("sponsored contents", etc.). For example, "post from ABC" could instead say "post from ABC, a bot account of XYZ".

Are you OK with dishonest speech?

If so, then not marking bot speech as such is mere dishonesty.

Not to mention that, in the general case of speech, I do not have to disclose if I am being paid to express my viewpoint.

I am okay with dishonest speech (or paid speech, for that matter), because it affects your reputation. Sockpuppets and bots harm reputation tracking.

Nobody in the real world - outside the ivory tower - actually cares about tracking the reputation of a PAC that was spun up for an election in order to run political ads, and will disappear in two months.

What makes a bot any different?

Not really. There are disclosure rules for paid advertisements. People can express whatever they want through a bot, as long as they also make it clear that this expression is being delivered by a bot.

But if the bots are intelligent enough to be a problem maybe they should have free speech.

Even if their sole purpose isn't any 1 side or argument, but just to create as much chaos, anger, and confusion among the masses as roboticly possible?

I think sockpuppets should be moderated, and bots should be too, for the same reason.

How are we defining what a bot is? From what I can tell a bot seems to be astroturfing done by Russians working for a quasi-propaganda office. But, there are many state sponsored "bots" from all kinds of places. Promoting all kinds of things and political views, from allies to foes.

Or is a bot strictly an "AI" bot?

You’d be surprised at the kind of biases you can stuff into a “term of service”.

I've investigated claims of Russian-controlled political bots on Twitter several times. The stories always collapse when inspected carefully. Indeed it's common sense it would be this way because most of these stories appear to blithely assume Russia has built bots that can pass the Turing test, which is implausible.

I don't believe there is any need to censor such "bots" because they don't exist. Instead they're the creation of:

• Bad, agenda driven journalism.

• Bad, agenda driven academics who are looking for topics to write papers about that might have social impact.

• A desire to de-humanise and silence people with conservative opinions.

Clear examples of these three are described in my essay here:

https://blog.plan99.net/did-russian-bots-impact-brexit-ad66f...

The third is also quite clearly seen in the recorded conversations with Twitter employees, one of whom said:

https://twitter.com/project_veritas/status/99675939690561945...

"Just go to a random [Trump] tweet, and just look at the followers. They'll all be like, guns, God, 'Merica, like, and with the American flags... like who says that? Who talks like that? It's for sure a bot."

Obviously this Twitter engineer knows full well they aren't bots. What he means is, we ban accounts we think are bots without worrying about it, so if I can create a confusion between "bots" and "conservative Trump supporters" then maybe they'll get kicked off Twitter more easily.

Censored for what?

Being bots? Bots are programmed by humans. Humans have a right to free speech.

Being Russian? Russians are also humans. Humans have a right to free speech.

Bots won't often have a viewpoint. Russia isn't pushing 1 side or the other with these things, but creating mass hatred by taking as extreme a view (left or right) as possible. They're built to pit people against each other, and they're doing a fantastic job. I'll leave it to you to decide if that's valuable or not.

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