The O’Donnell Machine
A new website called Truthy (after Stephen Colbert’s word) was set up by researchers at the University of Indiana to track internet memes, most specifically on Twitter. To understand how it works, read this link. The Truthy website is able to detect genuine grassroots memes and differentiate them from astroturfed memes. Can you guess who is one of the beneficiaries of the astroturfing?
Following a tip from a user who flagged a handful of suspicious tweets smearing Chris Coons, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate from Delaware, the researchers uncovered a network of about 10 bot accounts. These bots have names like @krossnews, @BethlehemTweets, and @kingdomcast. They inject thousands of memes, all of which link to posts from the Freedomist.com website.
“To avoid detection by Twitter, duplicate tweets are cleverly disguised by adding different hashtags or subtly tweaking the web addresses,” said IU research associate Bruno Gonçalves, who is mining the stream of tweets. “This gives the appearance of a lot of different people sharing the same views, while in reality the bots are flooding the Twittersphere with one coherent political message.”
Generating traffic is important, explains Gonçalves: “While usually referred to as ‘viral,’ the way in which information or rumors diffuse in a social network is different from infectious diseases. Rumors gradually acquire more credibility and appeal as we become more exposed to them. After some time, a threshold is crossed and the rumor becomes so widespread that it is considered as ‘common-knowledge’ within a community and hence, ‘True.'”
Indeed, each of the bot accounts has hundreds, and in some cases thousands of followers, who retweet and spread the truthy memes, he added.
I don’t know how many of you use Twitter but accounts connected to Christine O’Donnell have been a real annoyance to users from Delaware. Delaware has a fairly strong Twitter presence and have a hashtag for news & events in Delaware, #NetDE. (If you really want to weep, check out the #DESen hashtag.) O’Donnell fans, most from out-of-state, have been spamming the tag for months. In fact if you follow the tag you’ll see that it’s generally endless re-tweets of the same tweets, probably from these fake accounts. So they’re trying to build an appearance of strong grass roots support while getting information they think is helpful to Christine O’Donnell to voters in Delaware. Mostly, they’re just a nuisance.
Tags: Christine O'Donnell, DE-Sen
Meanwhile, GOP leaders are signing up to support Coons
http://www.chriscoons.com/blog/entry/founding_members_of_republicans_for_chris_coons
Surprises on that list: Mike Ratchford-a big wig in Mike Castle’s campaign, Bill Roth’s son Bud, and holy crap-Bob Carpenter.
And as a historical note, Henry Beckler was the man who fought to racially integrate the University and Whist Club.
I’m not sure that the “Bob Carpenter” is related to the namesake of Elena’s Henhouse. Bob himself hit the finish line in 1990. His son Ruly was a donor to Christine in 2008. Maybe the grandson?
For whatever it’s worth, here’s my response to this news: http://delsocial.blogspot.com/2010/10/christine-odonnell-stop-this-now.html
Really great post by Ken Grant on the Delaware Social Network Initiative and the problems caused by the spamming. I’m with Ken, I think the #NetDE should be a mostly non-political tag to learn about what’s going on in Delaware. It’s a shame that it’s been rendered almost unusable by spammers.
Thanks for posting this, Unstable Isotope.
There are two things going on and both contribute to the problem you and Ken Grant describe, inappropriate traffic on netDE, and a blizzard of out of state tweets on DEsen from so-called tea party patriots, rendering both “channels” relatively useless for Delawareans.
One problem is the “network of about 10 bot accounts” smearing Chris Coons. The ten Twitter accounts are controlled by the owner(s) of the Freedomist website. By sending the same message at the same time from all ten accounts (with links back to articles on the Freedomist) the author(s) is able to bootstrap his message to the world. Some of the messages are sent to influential conservatives with a large number of followers who are likely to retweet them and viola the imprimatur of credibility and at the same time, a wide breadth of transmission. This is the network discovered by truthy.indiana.edu which pushed the smears of Chris Coons including;
“How Chris Coons budget works uses tax 2 attend dinners and fashion shows” http://is.gd/gnfdg
“Here is how Chris Coons will make millions on Cap and Trade redstate teaparty” http://is.gd/gerZl
What is surprising to me is the high degree of correlation between Christine O’Donnell’s talking points, and tweets/articles on the Freedomist website.
A timeline analysis comparing the two might yield interesting results.
Also of interest is the nature of the opinions held by the Freedomist and O’Donnell on issues like the separation of church and state or whether there is a basis for Supreme Court decisions that prohibit public school prayer whether Christian, Jewish or Muslim. Reading through at the Freedomist, I wondered if the website was an education in where Christine O’Donnell is “coming from.”
There is a lot of traffic on DEsen and NetDE that is not bootstrapped by the author(s) at the Freedomist.
Much of the traffic on DEsen and NetDE is from Tea Party activists from all over the US wanting to be heard, and wanting to project as a majority. Some post original messages (“thought leaders”) and others spend hours re-tweeting previously posted tea-party messages. One message with many tags hastags IE #desen #netde #nvsen #nysen #casen #cagov etc gets a lot of mileage. Now have five people re-tweet it and ugh, twitter spam, the channels (hashtags) are spammed.
@KLSouth, day in and day out, is the most prolific tweeter on DEsen. He claims to be a Tea Party guy from Chicago IL and self-identifies as an investment banker.
KLSouth tweets prolifically about ODonnell’s virtues and Coons demerits. A lot of people re-tweet his messages (look for RT @KLSouth). He also has a second twitter account KellyMidwest.
Let me know if you have questions, I plan to stay on top of this story. I started it and I plan to finish it.
Most actual Delaware tweeters have had some manner of interaction with KLSouth, often by way of edited retweets.
thanks for the interesting look.
I seriously doubt KLSouth is a real person. Does he ever interact?
I really got sucked into looking at all the pictures of tweet networks on the Truthy website. After a while it starts making sense. I guess my question is – how do we stop the fakers while keeping Twitter free & open?
I’ve interacted with KLSouth.
He’s been busy today.
He wrote 72 of 279 #desen tweets: http://is.gd/gnlSz
He wrote 27 of 209 “Chris Coons”: http://is.gd/gnm3E
If you have a twitter account, you could use it to tweet manually or if you have the scripting software, tweet automatically.
I don’t know if tweetdeck can be used to automate tweets. I’m curious about that.
I knew my shunning of Twitter would pay off.
Your question is not easily answered, “how do we stop the fakers while keeping Twitter free & open?”
By using bots and 10 twitter accounts, they are using technology to amplify their message in violation of Twitter terms of service but the problem is not their use of technology rather its the propagandist aka “truthy” nature of the message and how it takes hold.
The way to stop someone on Twitter is to demonstrate satisfactorily that they’ve violated Twitter’s terms of service. Proving that they have is difficult but now it’s a little easier since the folks at Truthy.Indiana.Edu setup their site. Take for example,
“One involved a pair of anonymous and apparently automated accounts named @PeaceKaren_25 and @HopeMarie_25 – both now suspended by Twitter – which mainly relayed messages from Republican politicians. The former generated over 10,000 tweets since June; the latter retweeted them, but produced no messages of its own, says Menczer.” http://is.gd/gnjP5
In addition to detection, someone must report it to Twitter. I have not been thrilled by Twitters responses to either of my two complaints but as you can see from the paragraph above, they will pull the plug.
I’d like to see a journalist dig into the case above (@PeaceKaren_25 and @HopeMarie_25)to determine if that effort was underwritten by the GOP or a candidate. We need to create disincentives for pursuing this strategy or it will continue unabated.
Twitter is just the new medium for messages over the Internet that poison politics. The Obama Muslim meme circulated in email long before he was elected our Presindent and leader of the free world.
The Freedomist is like Fox News. They cultivate stories and ideas that become accepted as fact, truthy memes spead far and wide, via tweet and re-tweet with a link.
I think our success to overcome is our ability to reason, to listen to the arguments made by the opposition and make the strong counterargument when they’re raised in discourse.
Like when Chris explained the 1st amendment to Christine at Widener and both campaigns thought they won. It wasn’t just posture. There is a belief inside the fundamentalist movement that the Constitution does not and should not prohibit prayer in public schools. Chris has done a great job explaining the principles for that decision, a relatively recent one. What counts is that more people agree with him than her or all of the most critical issues. I’m rambling. Hopefully, this was helpful.
If Castle would have won, Ken Grant would be the spammer.
Neil, I spoke over a period of several days with another prolific tweeter of Coons attacks, trying to set the record straight, re: ncc taxes. He forwarded my info by DM to KLSouth, with no change in message from either.
i conclude, from this, that the truth is not of interest to them. Whether that requires cash payment, i couldn’t say.
I shunned twitter too – that was why
heragain, I concluded the same, that the truth is no interest. That’s what you get from true beliefers.