The Really Dark Truth About Bots
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN commenters cite it in threads about X, Bluesky and online manipulation as evidence that bots and propaganda are real.
What it is
Benn Jordan examines the role of bots and propaganda accounts on X and other social platforms, including the platform's decline and the influence of Russian operations. It covers more than bots, discussing bias and how the platform changed.
Recommended by 3 HN commenters across 2 different months, 2024 to 2025.
What Hacker News said
Recommends libertine · 2024-11 · on “The X (Twitter) to Bluesky Exodus”
This video about the decline of X and the onboarding of propaganda bots explains this phenomenon quite well, especially if you follow the timeline of events: [this video] Coincidentally or not, it was marked by Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter. At the end of the video, Benn states that he shared some of these insights with some news outlets that will take different spins on this story, so we'll probably see some interesting developments on this over the next weeks! Some questions that popped out: - Should X be banned in the EU for the deliberate, or irresponsible practice of promoting and protecting the spread of misinformation? - Should LLMs have security layers to prevent the automation of misin
Recommends consumer451 · 2024-11 · on “This website is hosted on Bluesky”
This video has nothing to do with Bluesky, but I think it provides a more likely explanation. Don't let the title fool you, it covers more than bots. [this video]
Recommends erentz · 2025-02 · on “TikTok's algorithm exhibited pro-Republican bias during 2024 presidential race”
Benn Jordan did a good video that covered the bots and bias on X recently. Don't know if it or the papers were submitted here before (anyone feel free to submit it not): [this video]
Cites nathas · 2024-11 · on “Malaria vaccine delivered by a mosquito bite”
Good news, I haven't been on reddit for years. The bots are real, regardless of what either of our opinions are. [this video] It's odd when certain topics - vaccines being one of them - come in with a flurry of comments when it isn't even highly upvoted. Especially when you have some drivel as the top comment saying Gates flew on the "lolita express" and some link to Prince Phillip. Ooookay? What about the article?
Cites fao_ · 2024-12 · on “Estimated concentrations of atrazine in agricultural groundwater”
> I think it's a bit reductionist to attribute election results to hormone imbalance. I very carefully did not attribute election results solely to that cause :) Russian funding and mass media covert ops are likely more to blame[1][2] At the same time, I do think that there's room to explain why vast swathes of the US has a very "I've got mine, fuck you" attitude. This also seems to be somewhat recent, because "Universal right to food" was one of the things proposed in, I want to say the 40s-50s? as one of the basic fundamental rights. Which, outright couldn't happen now with the current state of American Politics. [1]: [this video] [2]: idk there's a laundry list of news outlets confirming both
Cites moogly · 2025-02 · on “Andrej Karpathy: "I was given early access to Grok 3 earlier today"”
> Grok has an advantage in its access to Twitter data. Or is the advantage the other way around? That it has access to Twitter users (the ones that are not bots, that is)? [this video]