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Due to the Internet, conspiracy theories are on the rise and playing an increasingly significant role in global politics. Now new research from The Australian National University (ANU) has analysed digital data to reveal exactly who is propagating them and why.
Lead researcher Dr Colin Klein of the ANU School of Philosophy said that conspiracies such as Pizzagate (which falsely claimed high-ranking Democratic Party officials were running a child-sex ring out of a pizza shop) and the anti-vaccination movement are becoming a bigger issue.
Dr Klein and his team used a huge, publicly available dataset of every comment made on the conspiracy section of the world's largest discussion website Reddit from 2007 to mid-2015 to work out exactly who was taking part in spreading these conspiracies and why. He was surprised by the results.
The analysis showed that most conspiracies built traction when a range of different people and groups could connect it to their own preconceived beliefs or agendas.
http://www.anu.edu.au/news/all-news/anu-study-reveals-who-is-spreading-online-conspiracies
[Also Covered By]: Phys.org
[Paper]: Topic Modeling Reveals Distinct Interests within an Online Conspiracy Forum
Does Reddit seem like a good choice for this study?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Snow on Tuesday April 03 2018, @07:01PM (8 children)
There are places on reddit where there are very coordinated efforts to manipulate votes, use sockpuppets to give the illusion of support of a particular idea, and the outright use of censorship to keep the narrative. It's really disturbing. I've been wanting to write up an article on the topic, but haven't yet.
My experience has been with the /r/bitcoin subreddit. The story is very, very long, but in short -- Since 2013, bitcoiners have been discussing how to properly scale bitcoin. Around that time, it was generally assumed that the block size would be raised, and that the 1MB limit was a temporary one. Around that time, a company called Blockstream was founded, and proceeded to buy up (hire) many of the bitcoin developers. As these developers got bought up, their opinion about raising the block size would mysteriously change to '1MB max'.
During this time, the users wanted change. We wanted bigger blocksizes, and a number of proposals were on the table: 2MB, 8MB, 32MB, etc. Eventually a competing client was created (BitcoinXT) that would allow 8MB blocks. Shortly after the announcement of BitcoinXT, Theymos, the administrator of /r/bitcoin, started removing threads and comments that voiced support for BitcoinXT. It was slow at first, then more, and more, and more people would get banned.
They also changed their custom CSS so that comments that were removed would be completely hidden (thus removing evidence of the censorship). Eventually, pretty much everyone that supported bigger blocks got banned. We formed our own subreddit -- /r/btc. Those that remained in /r/bitcoin were either small blockers, noobs, or brainwashed individuals. Most of the people that had been with bitcoin for years and helped build bitcoin were banned from the bitcoin sub.
Eventually the big blockers (/r/btc), who actually made the original bitcoin great, created their own fork. Thus, Bitcoin Cash was created.
There is strong evidence that /r/bitcoin employs teams of sockpupets and they work very, very hard to discredit Bitcoin Cash. These trolls are very, very coordinated, and the message changes every day, but they are always on point. There is little doubt in my mind that this is a professionally run trolling operation. Someone is very scared of Bitcoin Cash and is putting a lot of money and effort to persuade the public that:
-- Btrash is a scam.
-- Roger Ver is a criminal
-- Bcash is chinacoin.
-- etc
Their arguments are all personal attacks on influential people in the Bitcoin Cash community, and are mostly false. Bitcoin Cash is objectively better than Bitcoin, so they can't attack the technology, so they attack the people -- The very people who made Bitcoin great many years ago.
The original Bitcoin has been hijacked and it happened via reddit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 03 2018, @07:38PM (1 child)
Whats wrong with using both?
(Score: 2) by Snow on Tuesday April 03 2018, @08:21PM
Nothing wrong with that. I have some of both.
Personally, I feel that the direction that Bitcoin Core has taken is wrong. I signed up for bitcoin to take over the place as the world's top currency (from USD). Bitcoin Core's refusal to raise the blocksize limits access to the block. Only the rich can make a 'real' bitcoin transaction and have it included in a block. This pushes people to transact using 'Layer 2' solutions, like Lightning. If Lightning works, great, but no one should be FORCED to use it.
My vision bitcoin is open to anyone and everyone. Are you dirt poor? No problem, your transaction costs 1/10th of a cent (or is free). I don't have a problem with layer 2 solutions, but I do have a problem with forcing people onto layer 2 solutions. If the layer 2 is so damn great, people should flock to it on their own.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 03 2018, @09:41PM (2 children)
Posting this under an article about conspiracy theories might be counterproductive.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 03 2018, @11:41PM (1 child)
That is what they want you to think! But Snow has it backwards, it is not the Bitcoin community the causes the conspiracies, it is a conspiracy that causes Bitcoin.
(Score: 2) by Snow on Wednesday April 04 2018, @12:51AM
Woah... Dude... That is... like... deep.
It's conspiracies all the way down.
(Score: 0) by fakefuck39 on Wednesday April 04 2018, @05:39AM (2 children)
I hate to break it to you, nothing happens via reddit, nothing gets hijacked via reddit, nothing is on reddit that does anything or impacts anything. the people who fuck around with the bitcoin price have never even heard of reddit. you think the direction that bitcoin takes is influenced by reddit? I'm going to guess you're a part of the 99% who is not 14. same with douche dot, same with the ten people who use this site. it's a bunch of people 99% of whom are 14 or retards, talking about nothing, and doing nothing. In fact, the more crap you see people post on reddit, the more they're actually doing.
back to the topic of this article/study - more idiots doing meaningless things. it's like going to a republican convention and polling to predict who's going to win.
(Score: 2) by Snow on Wednesday April 04 2018, @02:44PM (1 child)
For the most part, I agree. Nothing happens on reddit. However, for bitcoin, reddit is (by far) the major meeting place to discuss bitcoin and ideas. All of the developers have reddit accounts and are active on reddit. It actually is where decisions are made. You should check it out. It's very interesting to watch it happen in front of your eyes:
https://reddit.com/r/btc [reddit.com]
(Score: 0) by fakefuck39 on Saturday April 07 2018, @03:24AM
I see. I'm going to guess you also think google is in charge of bitcoin because developers have a gmail account. day traders of oil futures also have reddit accounts, so reddit influences the oil prices. let me know when you actually invest in bitcoin, hundreds of thousands of dollars of USD that you buy it for (like me). Otherwise, sorry - your opinion doesn't count since you're not educated on or involved in the topic at hand. You're some idiot doing PC Support who reads a lot of random crap and states his useless opinion as fact. M'a douche to you dipshit.