First of all, many pundits claimed they did change the outcome.
Second of all, I see few voices denying there's Russian bots trying to push stuff, my problem is not with banning the bots themselves, but with the collateral damage that's been done to non-bot accounts as a result of Twitter being very quick to ban nowdays, as a direct result of the pressure they were under after 2016.
No, a huge amount of coverage has been devoted both to trying to prove they exist and that they influenced elections or referendums.
I dug into this extensively at the time. A very large number of accounts being labelled as "bots" or "Putin trolls" turned out to be real people who lived in the west, when investigated by people who weren't under the spell of the conspiracy theory.
For example this guy who was accused of being a professional Russian troll but turned out to be a security guard in Glasgow:
You can tell it's a conspiracy theory because it's filled with stupid internal contradictions, like that Times article which claims the Russian accounts are both human and "cyborg", which they define as "automated but with human involvement" (which is it and why automate if you still need human involvement), or that the posts are simultaneously pro-Brexit and also pro-Remain:
Most of the tweets seen by this newspaper encouraged people to vote for Brexit, an outcome which Russia would have regarded as destabilising for the European Union. A number were pro-Remain, however, suggesting that the Russian goal may have been simply to sow division
That's something that comes up a lot. Journalists and lefty politicians claim "Russia" is trying to push all kinds of random policies they disapprove of, like Brexit. Yet when investigated these supposed bot accounts always turned out to have a wide variety of opinions, which is why the narrative eventually changed to generic "sowing division".
Another common theme is that Twitter accounts get fingered as bots based on nothing at all:
Bot-spotting tips. The Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRL) offers social-media users tips for spotting a bot:
Frequency: Bots are prolific posters. The more frequently they post, the more caution should be shown. The DFRL classifies 72 posts a day as suspicious, and more than 144 per day as highly suspicious.
Anonymity: Bots often lack any personal information. The accounts often have generic profile pictures and political slogans as "bios".
Amplification: A bot's timeline will often consist of re-tweets and verbatim quotes, with few posts containing original wording.
Common content: Networks of bots can be identified if multiple profiles tweet the same content almost simultaneously
One influential account that these bots retweeted, which claims to be based in the Isle of Wight, now has the handle @davidjobrexit. In August The Times identified it as a probable Russian propaganda account because it tweeted the Kremlin line during Moscow office hours, among other indicators
Moscow office hours is GMT+3, i.e. same as European office hours. So these criteria describe 90% of Twitter.
The fact that they can't even pick a coherent motivation for the proposed conspiracy makes it one of the most pathetic such theories of our time, yet amazingly it's totally convincing to metropolitan centre-left types. The very same people who decry how easily the masses are fooled by misinformation and conspiracy theories.
== You can tell it's a conspiracy theory because it's filled with stupid internal contradictions, like that Times article which claims the Russian accounts are both human and "cyborg", which they define as "automated but with human involvement" (which is it and why automate if you still need human involvement), or that the posts are simultaneously pro-Brexit and also pro-Remain==
Processes being “automated with human involvement” is not new or a hoax. It happens all the time, all over the world, in all types of industries. Ask someone who works in manufacturing, writing bots, or in customer service.
And yes, the posts can be contradictory. Especially because the motive (as outlined by a bi-partisan Senate Intelligence Committee report) is to sow chaos. Promoting two extremes certainly helps do that.
FYI, I’m not going to respond to this thread any further. You have clearly dug in to your stance and don’t seem open to other views. You are literally creating a new, unfounded conspiracy to de-bunk an established, documented conspiracy.
Final question: If someone is falsely accused of murder, does that mean there is never murder or that in a particular case, a mistake was made?
Remember: the original stated motive of these supposed bots wasn't to "sow chaos", it was to support Trump and Brexit using huge networks of bots that appeared human but weren't. When the evidence that this wasn't real became overwhelming, the conspiracy mutated.
The whole idea that people disagreeing with each other on Twitter is sufficient to sow chaos is itself kind of ridiculous, don't you think? That happens all the time naturally, what kind of government looks at the USA or Europe and thinks, ah yes, a totally peaceful place in which nobody ever disagrees on Twitter. If this were true the only things people would fight about on social media are things where Russia could credibly have an interest, but of course they fight about everything. Even the premise of this conspiracy is ridiculous.
You are literally creating a new, unfounded conspiracy to de-bunk an established, documented conspiracy
Sigh. This is what I mean.
I'm alleging no conspiracy. Where did I do that? You don't need a conspiracy theory to work out why "Russiagate" took off - it gave lots of people whose grip on reality isn't that strong an explanation for Trump and Brexit that they preferred to the real explanations. No conspiracy needed, no evil puppet masters, just group psychology.
Compare that to Russiagate or QAnon - specific allegations of an organised group of people manipulating the world for evil ends, and denying they're doing it.
If someone is falsely accused of murder, does that mean there is never murder or that in a particular case, a mistake was made?
Obviously it can mean either. But the justice system has mechanisms to stop someone constantly accusing someone else of murder with ever changing stories and no evidence: the concept of double jeopardy and perversion of justice. That's why people don't have to deal with endless troll accusations of murder.
Seen as a criminal justice case, Russiagate would have ended in "not guilty" long ago. The given motive collapsed under cross-examination. The evidence is highly circumstantial and all has obvious alternative explanations. The guilty parties aren't usually named, and when they are named they turn out to not be Russian, or not be bots, or both. The alleged behaviour isn't even illegal; after all the USA deliberately and openly funds foreign propaganda outlets like Voice of America.
More information from the Senate Intelligence Committee [1] [2]:
"Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign chairman Paul Manafort worked closely with a Russian intelligence officer who may have been involved in the hack and release of Democratic emails during the election, the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded in a bipartisan report released Tuesday."
"In particular, the committee’s investigation found that Manafort “represented a grave counterintelligence threat” due to his relationship with Kilimnik and other Russians connected to the country’s intelligence services — a bombshell conclusion that underscores how Russia developed a pipeline directly to the upper echelons of a U.S. presidential campaign."
