Another Word For It Patrick Durusau on Topic Maps and Semantic Diversity

Twitter deleted 200,000 Russian troll tweets. Read them here. by Ben Popken (NBC News)

From the post:

NBC News is publishing its database of more than 200,000 tweets that Twitter has tied to “malicious activity” from Russia-linked accounts during the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

These accounts, working in concert as part of large networks, pushed hundreds of thousands of inflammatory tweets, from fictitious tales of Democrats practicing witchcraft to hardline posts from users masquerading as Black Lives Matter activists. Investigators have traced the accounts to a Kremlin-linked propaganda outfit founded in 2013 known as the Internet Research Association (IRA). The organization has been assessed by the U.S. Intelligence Community to be part of a Russian state-run effort to influence the outcome of the 2016 U.S. presidential race. And they’re not done.

“There should be no doubt that Russia perceives its past efforts as successful and views the 2018 US midterm elections as a potential target for Russian influence operations,” Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats told the Senate Intelligence Committee Tuesday.
…

Wow!

What’s really amazing is that NBC keeps up the narrative of “Russian influence” while publishing data to the contrary!

No, I confess I haven’t read all 200K tweets but then neither has NBC, if they read any of them at all.

Download tweets.csv. (NBC link) (Don’t worry, I’ve stored a copy elsewhere should that one disappear.)

On Unix, try this: head -100 tweets.csv | awk -F "," '{ print $8 }' > 100-tweets.txt

The eight field of the csv file containing the text in each tweet.

Walk with me through the shadow of Russian influence and see how you feel:

1. “RT @LibertyBritt: He’s the brilliant guy who shoots himself in the foot to spite his face. And tries to convince us to do it too. https:/…”
2. “RT @K1erry: The Marco Rubio knockdown of Elizabeth Warren no liberal media outlet will cover https://t.co/Rh391fEXe3”
3. “Obama on Trump winning: ‘Anything’s possible’ https://t.co/MjVMZ5TR8Y #politics”
4. “RT @bgg2wl: Walmart
5. “it’s impossible! #TexasJihad”
6. “RT @LibsNoFun: Who will wave the flag? #DayWithoutImmigrants https://t.co/Cn6JKqzE6X”
7. “Bewaffnete attackieren Bus mit koptischen Christen #Islamisten #ISIS
8. “”
9. “The bright example of our failing education https://t.co/DgboGgkgVj”
10. “@sendavidperdue How are they gonna protect us if they just let a bunch of terrorist walk the cities of our city? #StopIslam #IslamKills”

Only ten “Russian influence” tweets and I’m already thinking about vodka. You?

Let’s try another ten:

1. “FC Barcelonas youth academy! La Masia doin work! Double tap for these little guys! https://t.co/eo1qIvLjgS”
2. “When I remember it’s #Friyay https://t.co/yjBTsaFaR2”
3. “RT @Ladydiann2: Remove these Anti Americans from America enough is enough abuse American freedoms how dare you low lives https://t.co/G44E6…”
4. “RT @BreitbartNews: This week’s “”Sweden incident.”” https://t.co/EINMeA9R2T”
5. “RT @alisajoy331: Prayer sent Never stop fighting💔 https://t.co/B9Tno5REjm”
6. “RT @RossMoorhouse: #ItsRiskyTo
7. “”
8. “RT @RedState: The KKK Says A&E Producers Tried to Stage Fake Scenes for Cancelled Documentary https://t.co/HwaebG2rdI”
9. “RT @hldb73: Bryan or Ryan Adams #whenthestarsgoblue #RejectedDebateTopics @WorldOfHashtags @TheRyanAdams @bryanadams https://t.co/wFBdne8K…”
10. “RT @WorldTruthTV: #mutual #respect https://t.co/auIjJ2RdBU”

Well comrade. Do you feel any different about the motherland? I don’t. Let’s read some more of her tweets!

1. “tired of kids how to get rid #SearchesGoogleIsAshamedOf”
2. “RT @crookedwren: “”Praise be to the Lord
3. “RT @deepscreenshots: https://t.co/1IuHuiAIJB”
4. “Kareem Abdul Jabber #OneLetterOffSports @midnight #HashtagWars”
5. “#God can be realized through all paths. All #religions…”
6. “RT @RawStory: ‘Star Wars’ Han Solo movie to begin production in January https://t.co/bkZq7F7IkD”
7. “RT @KStreetHipster: Hamner-Brown is already on its way here. It’s been on it’s way for billions of years. #KSHBC https://t.co/TQh86xN3pJ”
8. “RT @TrumpSuperPAC: Obama’s a Muslim & this video from @FoxNews proves it! Even @CNN admits Obama’s training protesters/jihadists! #MAGA htt…”
9. “RT @schotziejlk: .@greta Who is your #SuperBowl favorite?”
10. “RT @LefLaneLivin: @trueblackpower As Black People we need to Support

I’m going to change my middle name to Putin out of respect for our glorious leader!

Is it respectful to get a Putin tatoo on your hiney?

(Recovers from Russian influence)

This is NBC’s damning proof of Russian influence. Like I said at the beginning, Wow!

As in Wow! how dumb.

OK, to be fair, any tweet set will have a lot of trash in it and grepping for Clinton/clinton and Trump/trump returns 20,893 for Clinton and 49,669 for Trump.

I haven’t checked but liberals talking about Clinton/Trump pre-election ran about 2 1/2 times more mentions of Trump than Clinton. (Odd way to run a campaign.)

So, the usual grep/head, etc. and the first ten “Clinton” tweets are:

1. “Clinton: Trump should’ve apologized more
2. “RT @thomassfl: Wikileaks E-Mails:  Hillary Clinton Blackmailed Bernie Sanders https://t.co/l9X32FegV6.”
3. “Clinton’s VP Choice: More Harm Than Good https://t.co/iGnLChFHeP”
4. “Hillary Clinton vows to fight
5. “RT @Rammer_Jammer84: I don’t know about Hilary Clinton having a body double but it’s super weird that she came out by herself considering s…”
6. “RT @Darren32895836: After Hillary Clinton Caught 4attempting 2take advantage of Americans hardships &tears changes Strat #PrayForFlorida ht…”
7. “RT @steph93065: Hillary Clinton: Donald Trump’s Veterans Press Conference ‘Disgraceful’ – Breitbart https://t.co/CVvBOrTJBX”
8. “RT @DianeRainie1: Hey @HillaryClinton this message is for you. Pack it up & go home Hillary
9. “”
10. “”RejectedDebateTopics””

and the first ten “Trump” tweets are:

1. “Clinton: Trump should’ve apologized more
2. “RT @AriaWilsonGOP: 3 Women Face Charges After Being Caught Stealing Dozens Of Trump Signs https://t.co/JjlZxaW3JN https://t.co/qW2Ok9ROxH”
3. “RT @America_1st_: CW: “”The thing that impressed me was that Trump is always comfortable in own skin
4. “Dave Chappelle: “”Black Lives Matter”” is the worst slogan I’ve ever heard! How about “”enough is enough””? VotingTrump! https://t.co/5okvmoQhcj”
5. “Obama on Trump winning: ‘Anything’s possible’ https://t.co/MjVMZ5TR8Y #politics”
6. “RT @TrumpSuperPAC: Obama’s a Muslim & this video from @FoxNews proves it! Even @CNN admits Obama’s training protesters/jihadists! #MAGA htt…”
7. “Deceitful Media caught on act when trying to drive the “”Donald Trump is racist”” rhetoric.
8. “”
9. “RT @Veteran4Trump: A picture you will never see on @CNN or @MSNBC #BlacksForTrump Thumbs up for Trump 👍#MakeAmericaGreatAgain #Blacks4Trump…”
10. “RT @steph93065: Hillary Clinton: Donald Trump’s Veterans Press Conference ‘Disgraceful’ – Breitbart https://t.co/CVvBOrTJBX”

That’s a small part of NBC’s smoking gun on Russian influence?

Does it stand to reason that the CIA, NSA, etc., have similar cap-gun evidence?

Several options present themselves:

• Intelligence operatives and their leaders have been caught lying, again. That is spinning tales any reasonable reading of the evidence doesn’t support.
• Intelligence operatives are believing one more impossible thing before breakfast and ignoring the evidence.
• Journalists have chosen to not investigate whether intelligence operatives are lying or believing impossible things and report/defend intelligence conclusions.

Perhaps all three?

In any event, before crediting any “Russian influence” story, do take the time to review at least some of the 200,000 pieces of “evidence” NBC has collected on that topic.

You will be left amazed that you ever believed NBC News on any topic.