Support NeoGAF

[Spladam]

The billionaire GOP patron behind Trump's social media bot army

He’s a former computer scientist who, decades ago, helped build the technology at IBM that the computer giant would later use to create its Watson super-computer. He also helped other companies like Apple form the basis for its Siri platform.

Mercer, who during the campaign with help from his daughter Rebekah, played a below-the-radar — but integral — role in raising money for Trump and connected him with critical figures like Stephen Bannon.

Trump, meanwhile, has accrued among his 30 million Twitter followers — 15 million of which are actually bots that experts have told the Daily News could be “weaponized” to spread fake and misleading news stories that favor the White House or distract from the scandals it now faces.

But with the subtle introduction of advanced technology, by individuals familiar with artificial intelligence, their effectiveness as it pertains to targeting users and interacting with them could escalate rapidly.

“Fooling humans into doing things in the electronic realm turned out to be really easy,” said Simon Crosby, the chief technology officer at a firm called Bromium, pointing to well-documented campaigns that are thought to have influenced the 2016 presidential race and the Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom.

“But with a few extra steps that seem available in the right circles, it could get even easier,” he added.

Long before making his fortune at Renaissance Technologies, his current hedge fund, Mercer, 70, worked at IBM, where his name appeared on several patents and on in many publications and studies about “Brown clustering,” which the computer giant used to create its Watson Artificial Intelligence systems.

Mercer, who helped get Breitbart News off the ground years ago with millions of dollars in donations, also invested at least $5 million in a firm called Cambridge Analytica, a small tech operation “that mines online data to reach and influence potential voters” and “uses secret psychological methods to pinpoint which messages are the most persuasive to individual online viewers,” The New Yorker magazine reported earlier this year.

For more on Mercer and his propaganda machine, see this thread:
Robert Mercer: the big data billionaire waging war on mainstream media

 

[smurfx]

why doesn't twitter delete those accounts if we know they are bots?

 

[FreezeSSC]

Yeah really wish twitter would handle this issue.

 

[GoldenEye 007]

Twitter is complicit for not shutting down bot accounts. They don't give a shit about the real damage the platform is doing to real people.

And at this point, they are fully aware of the situation.

 

[FantasticMrFoxdie]

"The biggest twitter crowd sizes"

 

[Hagi]

why doesn't twitter delete those accounts if we know they are bots?

They'd have to care first.

 

[BronsonLee]

So this old guy has a Fiverr account then

 

[Slayven]

They'd have to care first.

It's not a flaw, it is a feature

 

[jack_package_200]

Gosh, if only Twitter had the power to enforce its terms of service

 

[Spladam]

why doesn't twitter delete those accounts if we know they are bots?

Twitter estimates that about 5% of all accounts are bots, but despite repeated development attempts at anti-bot software, they are having an increasingly more difficult time detecting which accounts are actually bots because of the sophistication of some of the current gen of bots, some of which can actually interact with other users in a somewhat sentient way, which is supposedly some of the tech that Mercer is behind.

 

[Arttemis]

why doesn't twitter delete those accounts if we know they are bots?

Yeah really wish twitter would handle this issue.

Twitter is complicit for not shutting down bot accounts. They don't give a shit about the real damage the platform is doing to real people.

And at this point, they are fully aware of the situation.

Fuck right, they are.

If Twitter can't be counted on, this level of manipulation with the intention of swaying attention should be considered false impersonation and fraud, with a consecutive punishment for each fucking count by Mercer and his employees. Same with every other bot factory.

 

[BlastProcessing]

why doesn't twitter delete those accounts if we know they are bots?

Because the amount of money Twitter can charge advertisers is directly proportional to the amount of users it has. If Twitter purged it's bots, it's stock price would plummet.

 

[Jarate]

why doesn't twitter delete those accounts if we know they are bots?

Twitter and most social media players have massive bot numbers

They don't want to share how many bots they actually have because they wouldnt be able to sell WE HAVE X AMOUNT OF USERS to advertisers. Thus, banning these bots would probably kill a good 25-30% of users (I am not kidding btw, there's a ludicrous amount of bots on Twitter)

Think about how happy advertisers would be if they found out that 25-30% of users on their platform that they were advertising too were actually bots.

Basically, all the social media companies are in too deep, and are no longer able to reasonably control the problem, and since they are all public, and revealing these bots would probably lower stock prices, theere's no incentive to change.

This is why Government Regulation exists. You gotta hold these companies accountable for fucking up stuff so bad.

 

[Icanplaythat]

Twitter and most social media players have massive bot numbers

They don't want to share how many bots they actually have because they wouldnt be able to sell WE HAVE X AMOUNT OF USERS to advertisers. Thus, banning these bots would probably kill a good 25-30% of users (I am not kidding btw, there's a ludicrous amount of bots on Twitter)

Think about how happy advertisers would be if they found out that 25-30% of users on their platform that they were advertising too were actually bots.

Basically, all the social media companies are in too deep, and are no longer able to reasonably control the problem, and since they are all public, and revealing these bots would probably lower stock prices, there's no incentive to change.

This is why Government Regulation exists. You gotta hold these companies accountable for fucking up stuff so bad.

This is the only non-snarky answer. Don't count on any regulation in the near future though, unless DOD/DNI felt it necessary for national security.

 

[War Peaceman]

I find it very interesting that liberal gaf wants to discriminate against robots by banning them from twitter.

But seriously Jarate that is a good post and completely spot on. The private entities in this case can't be trusted to act in good faith. The bubble needs to be burst.