West failing to tackle Russian hacking and fake news, says Latvia - Polidicks

[QUOTE]The west is failing to get to grips with Russian hacking and fake news, the Latvian foreign minister, Edgars Rinkēvičs, has said. Speaking on a visit to London, Rinkēvičs said there was increasing evidence that Russia was automating disinformation on social media. [B]Pointing to new Nato-sponsored research showing more than five times the number of Russian language tweets sent in [URL="https://www.theguardian.com/world/latvia"]Latvia[/URL] concerning Nato came from bots, instead of from individuals. The figure in Estonia was nine times as many.[/B] He described the tactic as ”very systematic and a new way to spread propaganda amongst young people”. [B]He urged US Congress to press ahead with its inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 US election, saying “it is essential for all US allies to understand the mechanics of how you combine cyber attack and then use it as [an] information weapon to influence people’s opinions”.[/B] Rinkēvičs said: “If you have hacking, fake news with a purpose, it is very difficult to react. We can find out what happened, but it is very difficult to prove. The whole law in this area needs addressing.” Rinkēvičs was attending a new joint Nordic-Baltic-UK forum of eight foreign ministers in London that was convened by the UK foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, the first such meeting to be held at foreign ministers level. He denied the meeting was designed to coordinate Brexit strategy among nations historically sympathetic to Britain, saying the EU negotiating position remained united. He said he would like to see the UK remain involved in EU foreign and defence policy after Brexit, but said the precise mechanism remained to be discussed. Johnson stressed Britain’s continuing role in Nato, as well as its leading military role sending 800 troops to lead a battlegroup in Estonia designed to deter Russian aggression in the region. [/QUOTE] [URL]https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/05/west-failing-to-tackle-russian-hacking-and-fake-news-says-latvia[/URL]

[quote]Pointing to new Nato-sponsored research showing more than five times the number of Russian language tweets sent in Latvia concerning Nato came from bots, instead of from individuals. The figure in Estonia was nine times as many. He described the tactic as ”very systematic and a new way to spread propaganda amongst young people”.[/quote] Why exactly is Twitter so inept at handling bots? You would think that if you're one of the biggest social media sites on the planet and it becomes common knowledge that a hostile global superpower is abusing your service via thousands (millions?) of bot accounts/posts, you might want to fix that? I know Twitter is busy hand-picking their bans to show how progressive and forward-thinking they are, but why are they not sorting this out? I know why the US government isn't doing anything about it but.. doesn't Twitter have SOME motivation to eliminate this bot nonsense?

It doesn't help that the US just elected a president in part because of fake news and Twitter bots lol And didn't Twitter get $800M of Russian investor money a few years back? Might explain a few things

Twitter still hasn't figured out a plan for making a profit, ten years on. It's a perfect example of something becoming much bigger than ever intended and now its creators don't know what to do next or how to solve the new, unforeseen problems their growth has invited.

what is failing to tackle fake news? at what point did it become more difficult to start talking about poverty and education than screening every single piece of writing ever made? clearly there's something structurally wrong if people are fooled, by the millions, by some guy screaming himself hoarse about gay frogs, and so on.

[QUOTE=Kommodore;52649175]what is failing to tackle fake news? at what point did it become more difficult to start talking about poverty and education than screening every single piece of writing ever made? clearly there's something structurally wrong if people are fooled, by the millions, by some guy screaming himself hoarse about gay frogs, and so on.[/QUOTE] Clearly you don't understand the issue at hand.

[QUOTE=Stopper;52649995]Clearly you don't understand the issue at hand.[/QUOTE] he does, he's just talking about the long term solution

[QUOTE=elixwhitetail;52649157]Twitter still hasn't figured out a plan for making a profit, ten years on. It's a perfect example of something becoming much bigger than ever intended and now its creators don't know what to do next or how to solve the new, unforeseen problems their growth has invited.[/QUOTE] For all the shit that would fly and all the angry entitled people that couldn’t post anymore, it really would be better if Twitter had to shut down. It would make our president 1% less of an embarrassment, for one. But of course, that would never happen. The company is probably considered “too big to fail” at this point, and who knows what Trump would do to keep it open if it needed money.

[QUOTE=srobins;52649034]Why exactly is Twitter so inept at handling bots? You would think that if you're one of the biggest social media sites on the planet and it becomes common knowledge that a hostile global superpower is abusing your service via thousands (millions?) of bot accounts/posts, you might want to fix that? I know Twitter is busy hand-picking their bans to show how progressive and forward-thinking they are, but why are they not sorting this out? I know why the US government isn't doing anything about it but.. doesn't Twitter have SOME motivation to eliminate this bot nonsense?[/QUOTE] I think through most of it's history (if not all) twitter moderation has been relatively minimal. They rely on people to report shit but the tools and systems they have aren't great either.