Beware of the Bots

[malaise]

That is all

[Skidmore]

1. Yup.

[malaise]

23. Hi

[Skidmore]

32. Hey ya!

nt

[MineralMan]

2. Beware of the bots...lyrics

Beware of the bots, they creep
And leap and glide and slide
Across the floor
Right through the door
And all around the wall
A splotch, a blotch
Be careful of the bots!

Apologies to Burt Bacharach - maybe...

[malaise]

5. LOL

[TheBlackAdder]

3. Yep. The boards are filled with liberal tigers that are charged up enough to eat their own.

[malaise]

6. But not all are liberal tigers

[TheBlackAdder]

9. I do notice that.

.

A few present themselves as liberal defenders, but take extremes and are inflexible.

Their posts have subtle backhanded slaps imbedded within them that stoke Democratic divisions.



Keep an eye out for them.


It's like those stereograms, once you know what to look for and how, the images pop out. I have stereogram generating software, but I don't feel like cranking it up now, so I'll just link to some common ones from the outside.







.

[Nitram]

17. A bot wouldn't know that the first one is a bunny rabbit and the second is a map of Africa with a

rhino and an elephant.

[Ligyron]

33. It is?

I could never decode those things

[Nitram]

41. Years ago I learned how to see the 3-D objects. Very easy once you get it.

[malaise]

24. Choking with laughter

[byronius]

7. ++1

[sheshe2]

4. Yup

[GeorgeGist]

8. They're like creepy crawly ...

MAGAts.

[malaise]

14. Worse than bed bugs

and spreading just as fast

[malaise]

25. DUzy

[PoliticAverse]

10. That's exactly what a bot would say. n/t

[malaise]

12. Ha

Yah think!

[L. Coyote]

11. One of the new species of trolls has been named Homoferus deplorabilis

https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1251&pid=2572300

[malaise]

13. You've been warning us for ages

[L. Coyote]

15. I'm considering a global monograph of the taxonomy of trolls

It is dangerous work in dark places, but somebody has to do it ...

[malaise]

16. Hahahahhahahha

[JCanete]

18. what's a bot, and who are they? What are they saying? How am I supposed to identify them? nt

[SaschaHM]

20. whatever you don't like. nt

[JCanete]

21. Yes, and this is a problem. Either your a bot or a putin plant on these boards, when people disagree

[Hekate]

37. "On these boards"? Does this happen a lot to you?

[JCanete]

38. I see it happen to a lot of people. Do you have a point? nt

[PoliticAverse]

22. Wikipedia can help...

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

[Bernardo de La Paz]

36. Most suspicious are accounts with the following characteristics

0) Important: Too much suspicion can be damaging for the community, but some amount of looking and checking could be useful.

1) Signed up within the last 12 months. Probably a surge of them in July, October, and January. Many (perhaps most) of members joining are quite legitimate (reference point 0 above).

2) High post count in a short time. 900 posts in 90 days is an average of 10 posts, day in day out. Note that members who are simply active can post at that rate. 15 years x 365 days = 5475 days. Highest post count I've seen is over 180,000, which is more than 30 posts per day, day in, day out, for 15 years. So perhaps the poster is merely active. (ref pt 0)

2b) High post counts can be jacked up with a lot of no-content non-political posts to non-political forums here, or lots of "+1" and "Yes I hate Trump too", especially in early stages of an account's life when flying under the radar is most valuable.

3) The goal of bots or bot-driven accounts is to be divisive and shit-disturbers. There was probably a lot of it going around and around both sides of the Bernie-Hillary nomination struggle and postmortems. (ref pt 0)

4) Operators might take two sides of an issue and amplify a controversy.

5) They often use concern trolling: "This {candidate's policy / party action / media personality} looks kind of bad from the outside. Do you think so too?"   "The party's inaction on this issue is worrying me." ... and so on.

6) Some threads seem to have an unusually high proportion of posters with attributes matching pts 1 and 2.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

40. MIRT got one today:

In this case it had 72 posts since it joined in October 2016, but its use of RW terminology got me suspicious. Since it only had 72 posts, I think it was an amateur. Name not mentioned in public here.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/10141790431#post58
https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=9153127

[suffragette]

19. Yes. Bots aka Trump's New Jobs Program.

[d_r]

26. Where the mac men meet

[billh58]

27. They are out in force

today. Makes one wonder if the increase in bots following the Trumpster on Twitter has any connection...

[RKP5637]

28. Am I a Bot? Help, am I in a Bot?

[malaise]

30. Bwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah

No bot would ask that

[pangaia]

29. Am I the only one here who can not tell a bot from the real thing?

I mean I am not even aware of having seen a bot post!
Am I this dumb?
Is there hope?

Am I actually a bot...and don't know it?

[malaise]

31. Join the line

What we know is there are bots everywhere these days

[Greybnk48]

34. We're infested today!

Thanks for the heads up!

[Hekate]

35. Beep boop beep!

[canetoad]

39. What on earth

Are you watching on TV?