Of bots and bad faith
This is new. Following Simon Rosenberg’s advice to vote on Day 1, I did on Thursday. So did a lot of neighbors here in the Cesspool of Sin despite many still smarting from the wrath of Hurricane Helene and the loss of homes, jobs, businesses, and loved ones.
Learning to navigate new voting machines and North Carolina’s new requirement for presenting photo IDs slowed the voting process. There were long lines on Thursday (and Friday) that gave the false impression of heavier turnout here than previous elections. It looked like the 2008 Obama election. Friday’s statistics revealed Day 1 turnout here in Helene-wracked Buncombe County was down about 40% from 2020. Not so in the rest of the North Carolina (NC Newsline/Yahoo News):
North Carolina set a new all-time record for early voting with a surge of more than 350,000 voters on the first day of open polls.
The State Board of Elections reported 353,166 voters Thursday, narrowly beating out the 2020 record of 348,559 ballots — a staggering shift in enthusiasm from the start of the campaign, when voters seemed to largely dread an expected rematch between a pair of familiar presidential candidates.
[…]
The result is even more noteworthy in consideration of the devastation to western North Carolina from Hurricane Helene, which observers widely predicted would present major disruptions to the election. According to the State Board of Elections, voters reported “no significant issues or problems” on Thursday.
“Yesterday’s turnout is a clear sign that voters are energized about this election, that they trust the elections process, and that a hurricane will not stop North Carolinians from exercising their right to vote,” said election board executive director Karen Brinson Bell.
The news story featured the photo I posted to FKA Twitter and other social media sites to help Rosenberg’s Day 1 promotion. It went viral. As of this moment, 6.5 million views.
The image cheered a lot of X users and triggered seemingly as many Trump supporters. Plus a lot of bots with next to no followers that joined Elon Musk’s MAGA magnet within the last year. Many of them seemed programmed to respond to good news from the left by the “I know you are but what am I?” rule.
“I landslide victory incoming for Trump. It’s a beautiful thing.”
“Trump really brings the people out!”
“Vote trump in droves”
“I know nobody voting Harris”
There were also “lefty” bots programmed to fight with the “righty” bots, though since they are bots they are neither. They are programmed to stir up anger and sow discord like the pass-it-on emails of the aughts.
An AI-powered bot army on X spread pro-Trump and pro-GOP propaganda, research shows (NBC News):
An army of political propaganda accounts powered by artificial intelligence posed as real people on X to argue in favor of Republican candidates and causes, according to a research report out of Clemson University.
The report details a coordinated AI campaign using large language models (LLM) — the type of artificial intelligence that powers convincing, human-seeming chat bots like ChatGPT — to reply to other users.
While it’s unclear who operated or funded the network, its focus on particular political pet projects with no clear connection to foreign countries indicates it’s an American political operation, rather than one run by a foreign government, the researchers said.
As the November elections near, the government and other watchdogs have warned of efforts to influence public opinion via AI-generated content. The presence of a seemingly coordinated domestic influence operation using AI adds yet another wrinkle to a rapidly developing and chaotic information landscape.
The network identified by the Clemson researchers included at least 686 identified X accounts that have posted more than 130,000 times since January. It targeted four Senate races and two primary races and supported former President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign. Many of the accounts were removed from X after NBC News emailed the platform for comment. The platform did not respond to NBC News’ inquiry.
The accounts followed a consistent pattern. Many had profile pictures that appealed to conservatives, like the far-right cartoon meme Pepe the frog, a cross or an American flag. They frequently replied to a person talking about a politician or a polarizing political issue on X, often to support Republican candidates or policies or denigrate Democratic candidates. While the accounts generally had few followers, their practice of replying to more popular posters made it more likely they’d be seen.
And what aren’t “RW” bots are swarming bad faith actors with way too much free time on their hands. It’s just not something to which I’ve paid much attention before.
But 15k retweets I’ll take.
It’s not all good news:
Michael Bitzer, a political science professor at North Carolina’s Catawba College, said early voting showed an equal number of Democrats and Republicans cast ballots on Thursday, a dramatic change from 2020, when more Democrats took advantage of early voting on the first day.
“There’s a great deal of interest in both sides of the aisle,” Bitzer said. “The great unknown is what are the unaffiliateds doing. We don’t have a good sense of where they may be landing in all of this.”