The now-enacted will of (some of) the people

[HanoiVillan]

1 hour ago, snowychap said:

Does he claim his assumption is 'solid evidence'?

In that middle section of his thread, he says that there are numerous possible explanations (including: all the accounts are authentic, the numbers are logical, many of the MAGA accounts are inorganic trolls) and gives his opinion on the likelihood of each of them.

No, he doesn't. However, @romavillan stated, in glossing the thread, that there were 'clear links between BoJo . . . and a group of paid MAGA trolls'. That is what I was disagreeing with, in saying that the writer presented no solid evidence of such. 

You're right, he does provide alternative possible explanations. However, as I address in my post, he simply dismisses some of them with sentences like 'I don't think much of that' and 'I'm also not convinced of that' without saying why, which certainly suggests a lack of willingness to do more than pay these alternatives lip service. 

1 hour ago, snowychap said:

Though he won the presidency two months before. Why was the actual election victory not as much oof a spur for 'lots of Trump fans' to sign up to twitter?

The only way we could know the answer would be for him to have actually interacted with the thousand accounts in question. I'm obviously not demanding that the thread author does this - we all have jobs and commitments - but it wouldn't be that difficult, if he has a list of just over 1000 accounts in question, to check them to see if they seem authentic or not (original content in posts, family photos, posts on a variety of topics). If he actually wanted to know why someone joined Twitter at a particular time, he could send them a DM and ask. However, and to your next point, why would anybody go to the trouble?

1 hour ago, snowychap said:

Your skepticism on the whole subject of social media propaganda is fair enough when it's about a lack of clear and robust evidence in support of some of the claims.

Unfortunately, however, it too often comes across as 'I'm never going to believe any of this and all of the people who even suggest that it's happening and that it may be having an effect on politics and elections around the world are the actual frauds' and it just looks like a stubborn clinging to your own assumptions.

If you go back to the post I was responding, it stated 'some people really need to go to jail over this sort of shit'. My position is not that bot farms *cannot* exist, or that if they existed they *could not possibly* do any harm, but that if people are going to go around arguing that a crime has occurred, they need to be able to show that a] it really has occurred, and if you want me to take it seriously, also b] it really has done some harm. In this case, we have no evidence of either.

Separately, I'm skeptical of the harm that could be caused by bots retweeting things, since I am skeptical that bot accounts that retweet politicians' tweets would have many independent human followers themselves, who didn't also follow the politician concerned. In other words, most people will prefer to follow humans rather than computer programs on social media, so these hypothetical retweets may not be reaching many human eyes. It's possible that people can prove that I'm wrong to be skeptical in these ways, but these are my priors and before they get updated I will need some real evidence. 

Finally, even if we take the supposition that a large number of these retweets do come from bot accounts as read, and I simply grant the premise to the poster, it still would be a completely inaccurate gloss of the thread for Cadwalladr to write 'Boris Johnson's online support? It's fake'. 

[blandy]

3 hours ago, snowychap said:

How do you know what that bloke's 'particular position on Brexit' is?

From his use of the hashtag #StoptheCoup in the quoted tweet and then from his blog

"life is tinged with anger and depression at the Brexit vote .... I had hoped that we would remain."

 

[peterms]

Astonishing.

Quote

Michael Gove has repeatedly refused to rule out the possibility that the government could ignore any law passed by parliament to stop a no-deal Brexit and insisted there would be no food shortages if the UK did crash out of the EU on 31 October.

The comments by Gove drew condemnation from both Labour and Conservative rebels, including one Tory MP who said it showed democracy was under threat.

Gove, who is in charge of planning for no deal, did not commit to abide by any law which rebel MPs will attempt to pass this week that could mandate an extension to article 50 in the event of no deal.

If the government will not obey legislation, then all bets are off, and others will feel they need not obey the law either.

Is this really what they want?

It also brings the prospect of civil servants and others refusing to implement what can be consider illegitimate instructions.

[mjmooney]

Josef Goebbels on propaganda: 

It would not be impossible to prove with sufficient repetition and a psychological understanding of the people concerned that a square is in fact a circle. They are mere words, and words can be moulded until they clothe ideas and disguise

Propaganda works best when those who are being manipulated are confident they are acting on their own free will.

Propaganda must facilitate the displacement of aggression by specifying the targets for hatred.

There is no need for propaganda to be rich in intellectual content.

The essence of propaganda consists in winning people over to an idea so sincerely, so vitally, that in the end they succumb to it utterly and can never escape from it.

There was no point in seeking to convert the intellectuals. For intellectuals would never be converted and would anyway always yield to the stronger, and this will always be "the man in the street." Arguments must therefore be crude, clear and forcible, and appeal to emotions and instincts, not the intellect. Truth was unimportant and entirely subordinate to tactics and psychology.

[snowychap]

46 minutes ago, blandy said:

From his use of the hashtag #StoptheCoup in the quoted tweet and then from his blog

"life is tinged with anger and depression at the Brexit vote .... I had hoped that we would remain."

That's interesting: you had to go to his blog to identify, for certain, his views on Brexit, it seems.

The use of the hashtag #StoptheCoup may well have led you to the view that he had a particular view on Brexit but it's certainly not an inference I'd necessarily draw (or drew when I read his thread).

Given that your post said:

On 30/08/2019 at 21:25, blandy said:

...not just accepting what's written by someone with a particular position on Brexit

the clear implication was that those people who 'accepted' what he wrote (or rather just didn't dismiss it) did so because they knew he also held a particular view on Brexit.

 

[snowychap]

3 hours ago, HanoiVillan said:

No, he doesn't. However, @romavillan stated, in glossing the thread, that there were 'clear links between BoJo . . . and a group of paid MAGA trolls'. That is what I was disagreeing with, in saying that the writer presented no solid evidence of such. 

That's fair enough then if the criticism you were laying down was other people's interpretation of the tweeted thread.

3 hours ago, HanoiVillan said:

You're right, he does provide alternative possible explanations. However, as I address in my post, he simply dismisses some of them with sentences like 'I don't think much of that' and 'I'm also not convinced of that' without saying why, which certainly suggests a lack of willingness to do more than pay these alternatives lip service.

Oh, come on - it's a twitter thread not a full academic paper.

3 hours ago, HanoiVillan said:

The only way we could know the answer would be for him to have actually interacted with the thousand accounts in question. I'm obviously not demanding that the thread author does this - we all have jobs and commitments - but it wouldn't be that difficult, if he has a list of just over 1000 accounts in question, to check them to see if they seem authentic or not (original content in posts, family photos, posts on a variety of topics). If he actually wanted to know why someone joined Twitter at a particular time, he could send them a DM and ask. However, and to your next point, why would anybody go to the trouble?

Which is it then? You're not demanding that they do that or why would anybody go to that trouble?

You make the claim that it wouldn't 'be that difficult' to interact with those accounts and 'know the answer', i.e. find out for sure, yet you also suggest a DM and an acceptance of the reply.

On that subject, if you can bear to refer back to the same bloke on twitter, he has a thread on an account with whom he did interact which would suggest that it's not quite as easy as you may be suggesting to identify 'for sure' what account may be what and why:

 

3 hours ago, HanoiVillan said:

My position is not that bot farms *cannot* exist, or that if they existed they *could not possibly* do any harm

No, your position is that they don't exist and it wouldn't matter if they did because you don't believe that they'd influence much if anything anyway - rather ignoring the ideas that elections are won at the margins and that the effectiveness of propaganda may well be in trying to get a particular outcome of x wins y but the effectiveness of misinformation may be merely to change the nature of the battlefield, e.g. sow more doubt, push more people to polarised positions, &c..

That until someone shows you clear, unambiguous and categorically irrefutable evidence you'll sit comfortably on the opposite extreme to the it's all Russia, &c. lot.

 

Edited September 1, 2019 by snowychap

[Enda]

On 30/08/2019 at 22:52, chrisp65 said:

In the interest of accuracy. Guy Verhofstadt, the individual nominated by the EU to oversee Brexit, the guy who has personally vouched to look after the interests of EU citizens is tweeting about Hong Kong.

He, not the EU, has also previously ridiculed Catalan separatists, whilst suggesting Scottish separatists  face ‘no obstacle’ to leaving the UK and joining the EU.

Obviously, as EU spokesperson on Brexit, any tweets on his certified account should be ignored.

For clarity, he’s not personally ‘the EU’.

Sorry if I'm having a bit of a go at you Chris, but the comment reflects a view in the UK that strikes a nerve with me. You often hear three soundbites from Brits:

1. Guy Verhofstadt MEP is synonymous with "the EU".
2. Germany and France call the shots. At the end of the day, what Merkel and Sarkozy want is what matters.
3. The EU is nothing but a bunch of unelected bureaucrats.

All three express an anti-EU sentiment, but they are simply contradictory. Internally inconsistent. You can claim the EU full is of out of touch bureaucrats, or that Germany calls the shots, or that tweets from an MEP carry weight, but all three cannot be true at once. Either democratically elected MEPs call the shots or the bureaucrats do. Either the EU is run by experts in suits or it's a German political plot for a Fourth Reich. And so on. You can't have all three. Even two are mostly impossible at the same time.

And I think this leads to a lot of the anti-EU sentiment in the UK. The Daily Mail can say "EU plans for tax cuts" when it's just a comment by some MEP, or a Commission proposal that will get shot down after a week or two. Brits, in general, don't acknowledge that the EU is three different institutions and none of them have total power. It's a lack of understanding that leads to people thinking "the EU" can simply give into the UK's Brexit demands if Boris negotiates hard enough. It's insane.

[HanoiVillan]

8 minutes ago, snowychap said:

No, your position is

Not sure where you get off on telling me what I think, but to be clear, I know what I think and you don't. 

[snowychap]

4 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

Not sure where you get off on telling me what I think, but to be clear, I know what I think and you don't. 

I apologise if you read it that way (I can see how you did and that's my fault).

What I was meaning to do was express my reading of the position you appear to hold (that's on top of what you had explicitly set out) based on inferences drawn from all of the posts you've made, over time, on the subject.

Edited September 1, 2019 by snowychap

[snowychap]

2 hours ago, blandy said:

From his use of the hashtag #StoptheCoup in the quoted tweet and then from his blog

"life is tinged with anger and depression at the Brexit vote .... I had hoped that we would remain."

Are you sure that they are the same people?

Marc Owen Jones (author of the twitter thread):

Quote

I am currently an Assistant Professor in Middle East Studies and and Digital Humaitien at Hamad bin Khalifa University, Doha .

Marc Owen Jones (author of the blog):

Quote

Marc Jones works in the holiday industry

Marc lives in a small village just outside Norwich with his wife, two daughters and a temperamental immigrant dog.

Edited September 1, 2019 by snowychap
Removed broken link

[chrisp65]

7 minutes ago, Enda said:

Sorry if I'm having a bit of a go at you Chris, but the comment reflects a view in the UK that strikes a nerve with me. You often hear three soundbites from Brits:

1. Guy Verhofstadt MEP is synonymous with "the EU".
2. Germany and France call the shots. At the end of the day, what Merkel and Sarkozy want is what matters.
3. The EU is nothing but a bunch of unelected bureaucrats.

All three express an anti-EU sentiment, but they are simply contradictory. Internally inconsistent. 

I’m fine with you having a go, I like to think I’m open to change my mind if I’m shown to be wrong. 

I quote GV as being the EU and yes, technically I can see how that’s wrong. Except, for the short hand of a message board, he’ll do. He is representing the EU in the main issue we are over here are concerned with. He literally is a spokes suit for the EU. He also expresses, on his twitter account that he chats politics on, that he represents the rights of EU citizens.

Points 2 and 3 are nothing to do with me, so I’ll pass on them.

Though I do dislike an awful lot about the EU and the self interested expansionism. 

[HanoiVillan]

3 minutes ago, snowychap said:

I apologise if you read it that way (I can see how you did and that's my fault).

What I was meaning to do was express the position that you appear to hold (that's on top of what you had explicitly set out) based on the inferences drawn from all of the posts you've made, over time, on the subject.

Fair enough, and sorry for the testy reply. It comes from it seeming to me that you have an impression of my opinions on this subject which is not really accurate. I'm wondering if you're not combining me with another poster or something? I think I've only written about bots and so on a couple of times on here, and I don't have the absolutist position that you seem to think I have. 

I'm off out but I'll try to reply in a bit more detail later. 

[snowychap]

1 minute ago, HanoiVillan said:

Fair enough, and sorry for the testy reply.

No worries. I can see how I may have prompted it but, as I say, it was unintentional.

[NurembergVillan]

37 minutes ago, snowychap said:

Marc lives in a small village just outside Norwich with his wife, two daughters and a temperamental immigrant dog.

Sounds like a Brexit hypocrite with a teenage au pair.

[Vive_La_Villa]

On 31/08/2019 at 10:47, StefanAVFC said:

Small thread

 

This doesn’t make any sense. I wonder if it’s even true.

[chrisp65]

6 minutes ago, Vive_La_Villa said:

This doesn’t make any sense. I wonder if it’s even true.

Are you suggesting somebody working for reuters has made it up or been conned?

[snowychap]

2 hours ago, peterms said:

Astonishing.

Quote

Michael Gove has repeatedly refused to rule out the possibility that the government could ignore any law passed by parliament to stop a no-deal Brexit and insisted there would be no food shortages if the UK did crash out of the EU on 31 October.

If the government will not obey legislation, then all bets are off, and others will feel they need not obey the law either.

Is this really what they want?

It also brings the prospect of civil servants and others refusing to implement what can be consider illegitimate instructions.

It does appear that the government and its ministers are doing their best to make the case against themselves. I can't believe that's completely unintentional.

Edited September 1, 2019 by snowychap

[peterms]

12 minutes ago, snowychap said:

It does appear that the government and its ministers are doing their best to make the case against themselves. I can't believe that's completely unintentional.

They also seem to be uniting the opposition to their plans, and alienating waverers and potential fence-sitters.  It's as though they want to be seen to have gone for a hard brexit, but to lose.

[ml1dch]

5 minutes ago, peterms said:

It's as though they want to be seen to have gone for a hard brexit, but to lose.

This Overton Window-shifting of terminology really needs to be stopped. The negotiated deal arranged by the last Government was a “hard” Brexit by the understood definition when the term was coined. Outside the economic structures of the EU. Compared to a “soft” version, remaining inside those economic structures while leaving the political ones.

What is set to happen on October 31st is not “hard” Brexit and really needs a term more befitting.

[StefanAVFC]

54 minutes ago, Vive_La_Villa said:

This doesn’t make any sense. I wonder if it’s even true.

Windrush didnt make any sense either.