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Comment by zaxm | Hacker News Reader

Bunch of threads on twitter from expert researchers on how this study is bogus. The main point is that there is zero paper or even a blog post that can be referenced to see if this statistic is true.

* https://twitter.com/ngleicher/status/1264614994475315200

* https://twitter.com/benimmo/status/1265329734705197056

* https://twitter.com/alexstamos/status/1264643202293751808

* https://twitter.com/3r1nG/status/1264567090742206464

(edit to add more examples of counterclaims to this "research")

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This is the closest I could get to as an original source...

https://www.cs.cmu.edu/news/nearly-half-twitter-accounts-dis...

I imagine they're going to publish the research, but it doesn't look like they have yet.

...though some of their methods are described.

This quote from the CMU article lines up with the headline on this HN discussion thread (200M, 62%, bots, COVID-19):

> CMU researchers since January have collected more than 200 million tweets discussing coronavirus or COVID-19. Of the top 50 influential retweeters, 82% are bots, they found. Of the top 1,000 retweeters, 62% are bots.

Fascinating article. Thank you for taking the time to find it.

That suggests an entirely different conclusion: that bots are better at becoming influential on Twitter than people are.

Influential if you want your audience to be entirely made of other bots.

without peer review or even an arxiv link these numbers might as well be pulled out of thin air

Carnegie Mellon University has credibility and is highly ranked (https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/carnegie-mellon-univers...), so a press release from them is more credible than thin air or a random blog.

Almost all "research" I've seen in this domain is politicized bullshit. I assume even if it isn't, the ones that get air do not get it because of merit; but because it suits someone's political axe-grinding.

Why the ranting shouts of 'bullshit' and claims of 'political axe-grinding'? Posts like this, that rarely have any facts with them, just suggest someone's angry at something they don't like. They don't tell me anything except someone's temperature is rising.

The "ranting shouts" are justified because, like the whole "weapons of mass destruction" pile of bullshit, touted by mostly the same goddamned weasels -there is zero evidence for their assertions, and ample evidence that they're lying: again.

If you google my name, unlike your "throwaway" anon name making assertions, irony of ironies, you will see I am a real human being, fully qualified to check into data science type assertions like this (and in fact; I have). Which is a lot more than "you" can say.

There are literally no claims in your original post that can be verified.

It's all subjective anger and whatnot. What am I or anyone supposed to take away from that?

> ample evidence that they're lying: again

Ok, what evidence. And don't tell me to google it or I can find it if I want to. You claim, you cite.

> There are literally no claims in your original post that can be verified.

> You claim, you cite.

If a claim cannot be verified, it is not a claim per se: it's an opinion.

these studies should also mention what the percentage is in the general twitter world. It might be even higher than this

My takeaway is that "news" from commercial outlets like MarketWatch (the publisher here) largely is not fact-based. Compare to reports in February about waves of anti-Asia discrimination, correspondeding to a major and ill-advised Democratic information initiative.

I don't know if Twitter has bots or how they tilt. What I do know is post-coronavirus commerical "news" outlets have lost my trust, as has much of the political establishment, red or blue.

What about COVID-19 coverage led you to your conclusion?

Can you please share examples of specific news reports that we’re non-factual?

For example, MarketWatch has been pushing articles for months about discrimination relative to public health measures to generate a narrative critical of the U.S. travel ban earlier this year affecting flights to and from China.[1] Closer to home, you can look to the steady diet of fear-based public health reporting that the "news" outlet finally has explicitly disclaimed as non-factual (but always was defective) -- "Due to the rapidly changing nature of the coronavirus public health crisis, some of the recommendations included in this article may eventually become out-of-date."[2]. It's ok to be wrong, but the "news" consistently has been "wrong" in a manner that has generated support for particular political policies, even particlar drugs have become political lightning rods whose efficacy is not being investigated or reported in a fair and reliable manner.[3]

One can explain this, and explain that, but when the sum result is being locked inside for months on end, unemployed, blocked from major life events with a media wrongly cheeleading those policies with wrong and unsupported information, this leads to a loss of trust. I'm not saying the media outlets are on a lark; I'm saying they haven't done their jobs of reporting facts outside the filter of propaganda and political bias which has infected so much policy dialog.

[1] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/no-chinese-allowed-racism-...

[2] https://www.boston.com/culture/lifestyle/2020/04/16/is-it-sa...

[3] https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/may/28/questions-ra...

> Closer to home, you can look to the steady diet of fear-based public health reporting that the "news" outlet finally has explicitly disclaimed as non-factual (but always was defective) -- "Due to the rapidly changing nature of the coronavirus public health crisis, some of the recommendations included in this article may eventually become out-of-date."[2].

Well, let's see.

> steady diet of fear-based public health reporting

There's a pandemic on with a nontrivial death rate. A little fear's deserved.

> that the "news" outlet

I believe these are called scare quotes.

> finally has explicitly disclaimed as non-factual

where is this disclaim?

> (but always was defective)

You have certainty on your side apparently.

Now the quote about stuff getting out of date, well, what do you expect? Speak to god if you want utter certainty, not scientists. Seriously, what makes you think eternally correct information drops fully formed into anyone's lap.

If you want to live in a world without science, aka the middle ages, I urge you to do so, so those of us left behind with the internet, antibiotics, human rights, a stable civil society, non-agricultural jobs, and education, can suffer alone.

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