exile Posted October 26, 2018 Share Posted October 26, 2018 Apparently Scottish Twitter 'has a problem with bots' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-45988491 This could be wider (rounder?) than politics... - Refers to outside interference associated with both indy and Brexit - Malign bots associated with #DissolveTheUnion - "hostile state-led interference" centred around former first minister and SNP leader Alex Salmond. - a push for Scotland to make a unilateral declaration of independence in June 2017 - the SNP MP walkout from Westminster also mentioned - botnets also aimed at Scottish Twitter which were "signalling for independence but messaging against the SNP". It's not really clear to me 1. what is considered "hostile" - e.g. does the BBC regard anything promoting the breakup of the UK as "hostile"? 2. what does "signalling for independence but messaging against the SNP" mean? ("I have a friend who supports indy but disnae like that nicola sturgeon?" ) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ally Bongo Posted October 26, 2018 Share Posted October 26, 2018 The Unionist media through a particular journalist tried to smear the #dissolvetheunion trend as bot related a couple of months ago which got it trending again by Indy supporters trying to show it was a lot of pish They are worried Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
exile Posted October 28, 2018 Author Share Posted October 28, 2018 I dug out the report this is based on. It's a 26 page PDF: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1D0WTJqsw9vsUifTBvK1ZreiGY3t2qyp8/view Some points include: They compared Glasgow and Edinburgh and found "The Glasgow profile sentiment showed a much heavier weight towards football"...where "football is intrinsically linked to troll traffic and connected abusive social media behaviours elsewhere). One example of a managed [botnet] group consisted of 65 accounts, all featuring Twitter profile "Celtic to the core! UTLR Independance YES - SNP NO" "The majority of these accounts were created after the 2014 Scottish independence referendum, but before the 2015 general election. They are currently dormant" - presumably, they did not have the desired effect. "Suspected hostile Russian trolls in the US were identified pushing Scottish topics" - assumed via Salmond's RT connection It's not all about politics of course but reports overall "Scotland (and its social media usage) remains largely positive with a central focus on living life to the full." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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