Social Manipulation - We've given trolls the greatest platform

[Jimmy Higgins]

So anyway, there was this huge scandal about a teenager from Kentucky and a Native American at a protest. People became upset over the narrative, as people should have been upset about such a narrative... had the narrative been accurate.

Twitter suspended an account on Monday afternoon that helped spread a controversial encounter between a Native American elder and a group of high school students wearing Make America Great Again hats.

The account claimed to belong to a California schoolteacher. Its profile photo was not of a schoolteacher, but of a blogger based in Brazil, CNN Business found. Twitter suspended the account soon after CNN Business asked about it.

The account, with the username @2020fight, was set up in December 2016 and appeared to be the tweets of a woman named Talia living in California. "Teacher & Advocate. Fighting for 2020," its Twitter bio read. Since the beginning of this year, the account had tweeted on average 130 times a day and had more than 40,000 followers.

Late on Friday, the account posted a minute-long video showing the now-iconic confrontation between a Native American elder and the high school students, with the caption, "This MAGA loser gleefully bothering a Native American protester at the Indigenous Peoples March."

It seems as if the United States has helped destroy the world twice over. Firstly, the unregulated derivatives market as well as unpoliced ratings agencies helped create the Great Recession. Meanwhile, an entirely unregulated Internet Social Media has given trolls the ability to not only have a voice, but have incredible influence in stoking rage and impacting magnitude of negative political opinion.

That's the thing people don't get about Putin and Trump. Trump winning was a bonus... Putin wanted to weaken the Clinton Presidency. And now the online trolls are working to push even more partisan outrage and hate. And they are winning and we have no defense against it.

 

[AirPoh]

So anyway, there was this huge scandal about a teenager from Kentucky and a Native American at a protest. People became upset over the narrative, as people should have been upset about such a narrative... had the narrative been accurate.

Twitter suspended an account on Monday afternoon that helped spread a controversial encounter between a Native American elder and a group of high school students wearing Make America Great Again hats.

The account claimed to belong to a California schoolteacher. Its profile photo was not of a schoolteacher, but of a blogger based in Brazil, CNN Business found. Twitter suspended the account soon after CNN Business asked about it.

The account, with the username @2020fight, was set up in December 2016 and appeared to be the tweets of a woman named Talia living in California. "Teacher & Advocate. Fighting for 2020," its Twitter bio read. Since the beginning of this year, the account had tweeted on average 130 times a day and had more than 40,000 followers.

Late on Friday, the account posted a minute-long video showing the now-iconic confrontation between a Native American elder and the high school students, with the caption, "This MAGA loser gleefully bothering a Native American protester at the Indigenous Peoples March."

It seems as if the United States has helped destroy the world twice over. Firstly, the unregulated derivatives market as well as unpoliced ratings agencies helped create the Great Recession. Meanwhile, an entirely unregulated Internet Social Media has given trolls the ability to not only have a voice, but have incredible influence in stoking rage and impacting magnitude of negative political opinion.

That's the thing people don't get about Putin and Trump. Trump winning was a bonus... Putin wanted to weaken the Clinton Presidency. And now the online trolls are working to push even more partisan outrage and hate. And they are winning and we have no defense against it.

The defense is not being stupid.

 

[ZiprHead]

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/covington-catholic-black-paint/

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

From the photo, the first thing I notice is everyone is wearing black... so the black paint is hardly surprising, even if tacky.

Secondly, they are yelling at an opponent. Black or white... I think they'd still be yelling.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

From the photo, the first thing I notice is everyone is wearing black... so the black paint is hardly surprising, even if tacky.

Secondly, they are yelling at an opponent. Black or white... I think they'd still be yelling.

- - - Updated - - -

The defense is not being stupid.

People aren't that bright overall, but when it comes to politics, even bright people can get very tribal minded and stop using their otherwise decent critical thinking skills. Why do you think these tactics work?

 

[marc]

... had the narrative been accurate.

But even if the account was questionable, even trollish, does that mean the narrative was actually inaccurate? Other longer videos have come out of the incident, and while they showed there was more to the story, they didn't necessarily show the students to be innocent angels. There is even one of what appears to be a smaller group of those students catcalling some girls walking by (good catholic boys eh?)

 

[barbos]

The narrative IS accurate. The account is fake and was created with intent to amplify troubles. These russian trolls again?
Solution would be accounts with a number of subscribers above certain limit get automatic review with respect to anonymity and whether or not they engage in political crap. This is what I understand they are trying to do in Russia, ironic, right? In free speech countries that can't be done of course.

 

[Elixir]

The narrative IS accurate. The account is fake and was created with intent to amplify troubles. These russian trolls again?
Solution would be accounts with a number of subscribers above certain limit get automatic review with respect to anonymity and whether or not they engage in political crap. This is what I understand they are trying to do in Russia, ironic, right? In free speech countries that can't be done of course.

I'm sure you'd like it if we hired some Russians to decide which accounts should be banned and which permitted. After all, they're already so far ahead of us in doing that, why shouldn't we leave it to "the experts"?

 

[barbos]

The narrative IS accurate. The account is fake and was created with intent to amplify troubles. These russian trolls again?
Solution would be accounts with a number of subscribers above certain limit get automatic review with respect to anonymity and whether or not they engage in political crap. This is what I understand they are trying to do in Russia, ironic, right? In free speech countries that can't be done of course.

I'm sure you'd like it if we hired some Russians to decide which accounts should be banned and which permitted. After all, they're already so far ahead of us in doing that, why shouldn't we leave it to "the experts"?

Not really, Chinese are the ones who are really ahead of everybody By the way, I understand Facebook requires verification.

 

[repoman]

This is what white people are supposed to do when approached by a Native American Elder

 

[barbos]

repoman, so they are saying that it's other way around and native american guy was harassing pro-trump marchers

 

[repoman]

 

[GenesisNemesis]

View attachment 19836

It's hilarious how Trumpians use Orwell as a defense when Orwell was so obviously against nationalism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notes_on_Nationalism

Orwell discusses nationalism and argues that it causes people to disregard common sense and to become more ignorant towards facts.

 

[Elixir]

View attachment 19836

It's hilarious how Trumpians use Orwell as a defense when Orwell was so obviously against nationalism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notes_on_Nationalism

Orwell discusses nationalism and argues that it causes people to disregard common sense and to become more ignorant towards facts.

Yabut MLK would have endorsed it...

 

[dismal]

It seems to me the big problem in this case was not the inaccurate reports on social media but that the *real* media and the internet outrage mobs pounced on it.

https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/n...-how-media-covered-false-smear-covington-kids

 

[Trausti]

It seems to me the big problem in this case was not the inaccurate reports on social media but that the *real* media and the internet outrage mobs pounced on it.

https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/n...-how-media-covered-false-smear-covington-kids

Who, whom?

 

[ZiprHead]

This journalist watched the entire video of the incident, several times. Here is what she found.

White-Washing White Supremacy: Media Rushes to Excuse Covington Catholic Students

What happened next is telling: In short, Phillips’ testimony about an incident in which a very large group of raucous boys surrounded him and acted with extreme disrespect is being ignored in favor of an after-the-fact narrative created by white teens from a virtually all-white school with a history of blatant and public racism. The boys’ narrative also is being amplified by white journalists, further disrespecting the Native elder and discounting the accounts of eyewitnesses at the scene. This discounting of experience is familiar to many of us: the women who seek reproductive health care who are effectively told we should endure abuse, the Native elder on sacred ground being made the “aggressor” as the only adult who tries to intervene in a situation, the people of color who constantly have largely male, majority-white media telling them “there’s more to the story” of their abuse than what they say. It’s the same story, different characters that we saw played out just recently in the U.S. Supreme Court hearings of Brett Kavanaugh, who also attended an elite Catholic school and whose alleged actions many defended as an example of “boys being boys.” White boys, of course.

 

[ZiprHead]

 

[Trausti]

This journalist watched the entire video of the incident, several times. Here is what she found.

White-Washing White Supremacy: Media Rushes to Excuse Covington Catholic Students

What happened next is telling: In short, Phillips’ testimony about an incident in which a very large group of raucous boys surrounded him and acted with extreme disrespect is being ignored in favor of an after-the-fact narrative created by white teens from a virtually all-white school with a history of blatant and public racism. The boys’ narrative also is being amplified by white journalists, further disrespecting the Native elder and discounting the accounts of eyewitnesses at the scene. This discounting of experience is familiar to many of us: the women who seek reproductive health care who are effectively told we should endure abuse, the Native elder on sacred ground being made the “aggressor” as the only adult who tries to intervene in a situation, the people of color who constantly have largely male, majority-white media telling them “there’s more to the story” of their abuse than what they say. It’s the same story, different characters that we saw played out just recently in the U.S. Supreme Court hearings of Brett Kavanaugh, who also attended an elite Catholic school and whose alleged actions many defended as an example of “boys being boys.” White boys, of course.

You gotta be fucking shitting me. A group of high school kids are waiting for their bus. Four or five black supremacists yell homophobic and racial slurs at the boys (media completely ignores this for some fucking reason) Despite the verbal insults, the boys try to ignore the racists and stay positive. Phillips, a known provocateur and liar, goes up to the boys and starts hitting a drum in their faces. Yet, that's all good. The bad actor is the boy who didn't know what to do and just smirked. Yeah, that's it. His crime is that he's a White, likely heterosexual, and Christian. It's the Duke Lacrosse case redux. It's who they are that makes them guilty. It makes it okay to dox them and threaten them and their school with violence - right Ziprhead? They're fucking white males! What Brett Kavanaugh has anything to do with this is insanely bizarre. It is absolutely atrocious how the left-wing mob and media treated these kids.

 

[Trausti]

I salute these virtuous souls for showing us that only tolerance and love is the way forward. We can only quell the Hatred and Intolerance of teenage Trump supporters by punching them violently in their grinning faces. How can we hope to #Resist the tide of dangerous #MAGA pomposity which is seeping into America’s youth if we are not prepared to smash our fists into some adolescent’s irritatingly-amused visage?

Smirking, the infamous facial expression of the far-right