FCBlitz said:
I am willing to wait 2 weeks to see if the wheels falls off this claim. We can fall victim to disinformation like the left. I would hope we are more patient before bleeping like sheep.
The leftist sheep are just insufferable.
Here's the playbook on this:
1. Operators identify a target audience, and within that audience they identify traits and ideas to develop profiles around. Scripts, and now likely LLMs, help spin up and develop the accounts and profiles. They'll choose personal descriptions and backgrounds that they think their target audience will find appealing but innocuous. And this isn't just guesswork. This is a full time, 8-5 job for countries like Russia, China, and Iran. Hell, we probably do it, too, but the point is, these are professional marketers who devote a lot of time and energy into understanding their audience's demographics, opinions, and motivations and how to best appeal to and manipulate them.
2. Foreign actors develop huge bot farms around these accounts. It used to be you'd see all of these accounts coming online at the same time, but that was obvious and now they'll start accounts at a slow pace. They'll often stay dormant with very little activity or engagement until the network is implemented. Think tens of thousands of accounts that may or may not randomly interact with each other, trying to mimic natural interaction to avoid detection. That helps them increase followers and retweets to increase their visibility in algorithms.
3. One the network is implemented, they'll use scripts to tweet or reply to tweets (or post/reply/like on whatever other platforms) variations on popular target ideas from their bots. They're not operating individual accounts at this point, but they're putting an idea into a script that sends variations to random accounts at different times to avoid looking like they're all working together. Eventually, one or more will start to take hold in the target audience from just sheer numbers. Again, think tens (or hundreds) of thousands of bots and dozens to hundreds of tweets a week. Eventually, real people will notice and start to follow because they say the right things and invite confirmation bias.
4. Bots that start to develop an actual following get pushed to a little more manual control and manipulation. They'll continue pushing standard propaganda to maintain visibility and relevance and continue to build a wider following, but now they're hardpoints for launching new talking points, conspiracy theories, and propaganda. Operators basically use them to throw crap at the wall and see what sticks. If something does, they'll let it get organically amplified or use the rest of the network to help it. Eventually, it takes hold within the target audience.
5. If you think the whole idea is stupid, consider this thread being started off a random Twitter account and how many posters post tweets like they're news or unquestioningly take them at face value. Then think of how many are on this board and got many other people they interact with.
