Connect with us

Published

5 months ago

on

China Report is MIT Technology Review’s newsletter about technology developments in China. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Tuesday.

A few weeks ago, at the peak of China’s protests against stringent zero-covid policies, people were shocked to find that searching for major Chinese cities on Twitter led to an endless stream of ads for hookup or escort services in Chinese. At the time, people suspected this was a tactic deployed by the Chinese government to poison the search results and prevent people from accessing protest information. 

But this spam content may not have had anything to do with the Chinese government after allaccording toa report published on Monday by the Stanford Internet Observatory. “While the spam did drown out legitimate protest-related content, there is no evidence that it was designed to do so, nor that it was a deliberate effort by the Chinese government,” wrote David Thiel, the report’s author.

Instead, they were likely just the usual commercial spam bots that have plagued Twitter forever. These particular accounts exist to attract the attention of Chinese users who go on foreign networks to access porn.

So the “significant uptick” in spam was just a coincidence? The short answer is: very likely. There are two major reasons why Thiel does not think the bots are related to the Chinese government.

First of all, these accounts have been posting spam for a long time. And they sent out even more tweets, and more consistently, before the protests broke out, according to a data analysis on the activities of over 600,000 accounts from November 15 to 29. Another analysis shows they’ve also continued to push out spam even as discussions of the protests have died down. 

Check out these two charts (for reference, the protests peaked around November 27):

So did it just feel as if spam activity spiked during the protests? This graph shows that many more bot accounts were in fact created in November: 

A bar chart showing that spam accounts created in November largely outnumbers accounts created in the past months.

But Thiel emphasizes that content moderation takes time. People tend to ignore the effect called “survivorship bias”: older spam content and accounts are constantly being removed from the platform, but researchers don’t have data on suspended accounts. So a graph like this one only shows accounts that survived Twitter’s spam filters. That’s why November’s spike looks so big: they are new accounts created most recently to replace their dead peers and are still standing—but not all will survive, so they wouldn’t be there if we were to revisit this graph in, say, a few months. In other words, if you conducted a data analysis right after the protests, it would certainly seem thatthis kind of spam just started recently. But it’s not necessarily the full truth.

Secondly, if the spam accounts were meant to bury information about the protests, they did a pretty poor job. While escort-ad spam featured many Chinese city names as keywords and hashtags, Thiel found that they did not target the hashtags actually used to discuss the protests, like #A4Revolution or #ChinaProtest2022, “which is what you would assume the government would be interested in jumping on if they were trying to silence things,” he tells me. Of the

Read More

————

By: Zeyi Yang
Title: Why it’s so hard to tell porn spam from Chinese state bots
Sourced From: www.technologyreview.com/2022/12/21/1065676/china-twitter-porn-spam-bot/
Published Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2022 11:00:00 +0000

Did you miss our previous article…
https://mansbrand.com/the-download-worst-tech-of-2022-and-cryptos-future/

Total
0
Shares
Share 0
Tweet 0
Pin it 0
Share 0
Related Topics:
Continue Reading

Frontier Adventure

Transporter-8 Mission

Published

9 hours ago

on

June 10, 2023

By

hqdefault 10

hqdefault 11

SpaceX is targeting Monday, June 12 for Falcon 9’s launch of the Transporter-8 mission to low-Earth orbit from Space Launch Complex 4E (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The 57-minute launch window opens at 2:19 p.m. PT (21:19 UTC). If needed, there is a backup opportunity Tuesday, June 13 with the same window.

The first stage booster supporting this mission previously launched NROL-87, NROL-85, SARah-1, SWOT, and four Starlink missions. Following stage separation, Falcon 9 will land on Landing Zone 4 (LZ-4) at Vandenberg Space Force Base.

Transporter-8 is SpaceX’s eighth dedicated smallsat rideshare mission. There will be 72 payloads on this flight, including CubeSats, MicroSats, a re-entry capsule, and orbital transfer vehicles carrying spacecraft to be deployed at a later time.

A live webcast of this mission will begin about 15 minutes prior to liftoff.

Did you miss our previous article…
https://mansbrand.com/triggered-star-birth-in-the-nessie-nebula/

Continue Reading

Fashion

Gothic Style for Men: Goth Aesthetic Fashion Guide

Published

10 hours ago

on

June 10, 2023

By

Gothic Style Men

Gothic Style Men
In a world where fashion trends often come and go in the blink of an eye, the Gothic style has …

Read More

——————-

By: The Fashionisto
Title: Gothic Style for Men: Goth Aesthetic Fashion Guide
Sourced From: www.thefashionisto.com/gothic-style-men/
Published Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2023 21:06:11 +0000

Continue Reading

EDM

&ME And Black Coffee Join Forces For ‘The Rapture Pt.III’

Published

12 hours ago

on

June 10, 2023

By

Snapinsta.app 352617667 1598819543861706 4618955323378922549 n 1080 819x1024 1

The long-awaited ID is finally out there for everyone to enjoy and close their eyes to.

This one is among the sweetest pieces of Electronic music you’ll find this year. It’s nothing new, though: that’s the style of the talented &ME. To my understanding, no one does the pianos quite like him. It’s that blend of soft, emotional piano melodies, and the minimalist Melodic Techno base under it, with just enough elements to make the piano stand out as much as it can. That blend can melt a soul. That very blend can make peace in the world.

It’s that very feeling of peace and unity that comes to me whenever I listen to the song that’s just come out: ‘The Rapture Pt.III‘, by &ME and Black Coffee.

The very eagerly awaited track has been spun by the Keinemusik DJs for a while now, making this piece one of the most requested IDs out there. ‘Pt.III’ marks the end of the The Rapture series, started by &ME around five years ago with ‘The Rapture‘, a defining track for many. Then came ‘Pt.II‘, which also made waves in the industry. This recent ‘Pt.III’ is the first — and allegedly, the only — time &ME has joined forces for the completion of the track. And who better to collaborate with than South African maestro Black Coffee.

Snapinsta.app 352617667 1598819543861706 4618955323378922549 n 1080 819x1024 2
(Left to right) Black Coffee, &ME.

The Rapture Pt.III

As is a staple in the series, ‘Pt.III’ is driven by a very subtle kick, evolving white-noise shakers, groovy percussion, a marching synth, and, of course, PIANO, tons of piano. That’s all there is to it. The elements are few, but don’t be deceived, for masters at work know their craft very well and will make the most out of each and every element. The track as is works flawlessly, giving the piano the starring role of defining this song as unique and separating it from the rest of Melodic Techno.

The track really powers itself on and on when listening, even resorting to some teary eyes if you really feel the melody. It truly is an iconic track, and fans and critics alike know it. Just watch it in action!

Ver esta publicación en Instagram

Una publicación compartida de &ME | Keinemusik (@andmeandyou)

Go ahead and listen to the full version of &ME and Black Coffee’s ‘The Rapture Pt.III’ by heading below for your beloved Spotify play, or rather, click here to be redirected to YouTube. Also, you may click here to support the song any other way you like.

The post &ME And Black Coffee Join Forces For ‘The Rapture Pt.III’ appeared first on EDMTunes.

—————————–

By: Felipe Latorre Cabello
Title: &ME And Black Coffee Join Forces For ‘The Rapture Pt.III’
Sourced From: www.edmtunes.com/2023/06/ame-and-black-coffee-join-forces-for-the-rapture-pt-iii/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=ame-and-black-coffee-join-forces-for-the-rapture-pt-iii
Published Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2023 19:17:39 +0000

Read More

Did you miss our previous article…
https://mansbrand.com/tistos-all-time-classic-traffic-gets-two-smashing-remixes/

Continue Reading

Trending