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Comment by JPKab | Hacker News Reader

"predominate source of trending information is well-meaning individuals and not motivated state-level actors intent on disrupting an election."

What evidence do you have that the predominant source of trending information is motivated state-level actors? That is an incredibly bold statement, and the framing you chose is such that there needs to evidence to the contrary, rather than evidence to support such a claim.

Edit: A bunch of responses are mistakenly thinking I am denying the presence of Twitter bots created and operated by state actors. I'm not. I'm arguing with the incredibly bold statement that they are the PREDOMINANT SOURCE of trending information.

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> What evidence do you have that the predominant source of trending information is motivated state-level actors?

I didn't make that post. But the fact that state level actors have manipulated Twitter topics with bots, astroturfing, and other artificial means is pretty well established. I'm not sure I'd agree it's the "Predominant" source of trending information, that there has been state-level influence from foreign actors has been well documented.

I didn't argue that. I was arguing with the "predominant" part he stated. I'm not a blind moron. I'm fully aware of bot manipulation. Who isn't?

Yet I was downvoted for simply trying to reign in the completely overblown nature of these statements. These assertions since 2016 have been repeatedly made with partial and/or zero evidence.

There is still zero evidence that the manipulation of social media by Russian assets in 2016 actually affected the votes of the American public. As far as I can tell, the blue collar whites in the Rust Belt don't exactly have a large presence on social media, let alone any record of statements saying they are changing their vote because of an advertisement. This is all just playing into the hands of the DNC, who for two successive elections have manipulated the Democratic primary to kill Bernie Sanders, and immediately resort to "the lesser of two evils" mode to bamboozle his supporters into supporting their oppressors.

> I was arguing with the "predominant" part he stated. I'm fully aware of bot manipulation. Who isn't?

You could have easily pointed this out above without being so argumentative. If you are so concerned about downvotes, perhaps you should avoid being so confrontational.

You could simply google "twitter bots state level actors" and find plenty of reading.

There is plenty about the earth being flat too, doesn't prove anything.

But if you google "twitter bots state level actor" the first three links are two government sites and one is nature.com (as in the big journal Nature).

I can give lots of examples of googling that gets you to conspiracy sites, but I am not sure how those examples would prove anything...

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