Thread by @mikefarb1

#unhackthevote

Bots Thread 1

Bots Brainwashing and Bullshit.

The Alt Right is playing us and we are letting them.

Are we willing to lose one of our strongest voices ?

A look at the Attack on Al Franken.

Thread

Let's take a close look at the anatomy of a Twitter Bot Attack

This Medium article by Erin Lank describes how the alt-right, led by Roger Stone, “predicted” then amplified the message that Senator Al Franken was a sexual predator.

medium.com/@Erinlank/the-…

The article details how known mouthpieces for the alt-right led the way with spreading anti-Franken allegations, and how these messages were spread via thousands of posts on Twitter that caused the #alfranken and #frankenfondles hashtags to trend heavily.

The article describes how the alt-right accusations launched against Franken were spread in the alt-right press, and how these articles were amplified by bots. In contrast, a statement of strong support from eight former staffers got very little exposure and died in the dark.

This is because the alt-right is in possession of a very powerful two-stage media weapon:

1. Publication of propaganda in numerous far-right news outlets
2. Coordinated use of social media bots to link to the publications and to make the news “trend” on Twitter and Facebook.

The destructive capabilities of this weapon can not be understated.

It’s natural for people to believe what they keep hearing. It’s easy to think that if everybody’s talking about it, it must be true.

Unfortunately, this natural instinct can become a liability in this new age of social media. We don’t really know who “everybody” is anymore.

On the internet it is very difficult to differentiate a man from a machine, it’s hard to know which of the voices in our feeds and on our timelines are sentient beings with their own beliefs, and which are simply dumb clones whose sole purpose is to align you with false beliefs.

And now lets take a deeper look.