Single experiment only, Twitter hiding pro-UA post until spammed by hate robots | Hacker News Reader

Single experiment only, Twitter hiding pro-UA post until spammed by hate robots

bsky.app

21 pointscasenmgreen7 comments

A British (Welsh) journalist ran an experiment, comparing what happens on Twitter vs what happens on BlueSky, when he posts a pro-Ukraine post.

Plenty of follows on both, 5k more on Twitter.

BlueSky, tons of immediate pro-UA replies.

Twitter, silence for 12 hours - almost no views - then a barrage of hate-spam from robots, then post is made visible to everyone else.

This also;

https://bsky.app/profile/brendannyhan.bsky.social/post/3lkjs...

A horrific video, of the 250 or so people who were deported (without being accused of any crime, no process at all) to El Salvador, where they have been placed into a forced labour jail.

Scroll down to reply by Dr. Steven Buckley; screenshot of a mass of robot replies all of which are in favour of the video.

It's clear that twitter is infested with pro-trump bots, but I wouldn't take anything seriously from Bluesky either. They are equally rotten shitholes with biased agenda's.

I may be wrong, but that seems to miss the key point - on Twitter, there was an initial 12 hour period of almost no visibility, then the hate bots, then visibility.

Bots you could say - well, who knows where they are from - but that delay? and then visibility after the bots? on the face of it, that's Twitter and only Twitter, and means the bots are Twitter too.

Also, the positive bots hitting the posts of that awful video of the mass deportation. If Twitter is running hate bots, it'll be running love bots too.

Interestingly this thread didn't catch any wind here either.

A single anecdote is evidence of nothing.

It is "clear" from my feed on Twitter that it is based on who you follow and what you engage with. This reminds me of when a guy claimed here that Instagram showed him lots of gore - then revealed that he clicked on it whenever he saw it.

It seems to me that line of argument is refuted by what the experiment is; he made a post, then looked at the replies, and their timing.

Twelve hours of no views on Twitter, then a mass of hostile robot posts, then his post is generally visible and starts getting views.

BlueSky, immediate responses and all in favour of Ukraine.

This isn't the algorithm choosing what he views. These are what other people posted in reply to his post.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com