Trolling bots in Twitter to deal with bigots (this is too much) | Hacker News Reader

Trolling bots in Twitter to deal with bigots (this is too much)

gizmodo.com

16 pointsaq3cn8 comments

Hm, that bot makes loaded statements and attacks some groups. It also directly mentions several persons by name. Yet another sexist and racist troll on twitter.

> nothing true is ever said in Florida

> you can't be sexist to men

> straight people don't deserve pride

I write a bot that makes technically correct yet obnoxious statements on HN - say, if it detects a race-related article "all lives matter", an article on golang "no generics makes the language less powerful", or an article on spacex "still not profitable".

Am I dealing with pedants and fanboys? Am I slaying the Valley's sacred cows? Or am I pointlessly degrading the quality of posts? Will such an effort be productive? Will it convince anyone that I'm right?

It depends on if you are expressing politically approved opinions and attacking politically approved targets, of course. I'm surprised there's any need to even ask.

This doesn't seem like a good idea. People arguing with the bot will become convinced that the other side has no coherent arguments to offer, and everyone reading those discussion threads will see the worst of the side they disagree with. Obviously many people don't realize it's a bot; like the person arguing with it for ~10 hours mentioned in the article. This will only serve to make people on both sides think supporters of the other side are incoherent ramblers.

It seems to me that in few years auto-suggestions in messaging apps will be smart enough for people to rely confidently on it. In those cases, don't you think even talking to human other side will be actually equivalent to talking to a bot.

So in the end, will there be any difference at all?

> Tech is however moving in a direction where these improvements may be getting out of hand. A simple example is Google's new Allo messenger.

> One of the features of the integrated AI is that it can suggest answers to messages that you receive. If a friend sends you a pic of his or her cat, you may get suggestions like "ah sweet cat" or similar.

> So, instead of having to type a reply, you simply tap on one of the suggestions to reply. You may still write your own reply if the suggestions don't match what you want to express though.

> Eventually, with improvements in AI, text and image recognition and in other fields, these replies may be automated. Imagine a world where two bots communicate with each other on behalf of actual human beings.

> The user takes a photo of a cat, the AI knows that cat pics are sent to some contacts and does so automatically. The bot on the other end recognizes the new cat picture, and replies stating that the picture is particularly good.

http://www.ghacks.net/2016/09/26/making-things-easier-tech-i...

Gizmodo? Really? PrisonPlanet or AlexJones weren't available?

This is fantastic to hear about! Sarah Nyberg has done such amazing work with promoting the cause of social justice on Twitter for the past few years. I'm glad she's still doing what she loves and making the world a better place in the process.

> This is fantastic to hear about! Sarah Nyberg

Sarah "Pedo" Nyberg is a troll himself. And Gizmodo is now Gawker 2.0 .

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