{"id":784,"date":"2023-08-25T11:56:42","date_gmt":"2023-08-25T11:56:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gabriel.town\/blog\/?p=784"},"modified":"2023-08-25T11:56:42","modified_gmt":"2023-08-25T11:56:42","slug":"bots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gabriel.town\/blog\/2023\/08\/25\/bots\/","title":{"rendered":"BOTS?!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

First Glance
<\/strong>I\u2019ve written here before about how terrible my YouTube recommendations are. It’s a point of pride how little the algorithm seems to know about me. But things have gotten much worse in my feed, namely all the Kitchen Nightmares clips and Doctor Mike reaction videos have been replaced with nonstop coverage of how terrible and ridiculous Amber Heard is and Johnny Depp\u2019s saintly affable behavior in putting up with her silly defamation attempt. I don\u2019t actually<\/em> think Heard is ridiculous nor do I find Depp affable, in fact I find his attempt to recharacterize Heard\u2019s domestic abuse claims as \u201cdefamation\u201d disgusting. But from looking at my YouTube recs you\u2019d think I was mad as a hatter for the man, an absolute Edward ScissorStan. And according to several news sites, the \u201ccourt of public opinion\u201d agrees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Double Take<\/strong>This term \u201ccourt of public opinion\u201d is strange to me. First of all, the source for most of these articles are \u201cPR Experts\u201d who, in a few cases, are speaking on the condition of anonymity<\/a> which just makes me think they\u2019re trying to conceal connections. But the bigger reason is that the data they\u2019re using to poll this supposed court are hashtags and views of the same videos that are flooding my feed. In an instance where algorithms are serving trial content to victim-sympathetic folks like myself whose only social media interaction with Depp was 2006\u2019s Jar of Dirt remix<\/a>, are social media interactions an accurate gauge of public opinion?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before I go on, get your scrolling finger ready because I want to show y\u2019all the extent of content I\u2019ve been served. These video recommendations are all from one visit to my YouTube homepage. I haven\u2019t included the titles but the screengrabs speak for themselves:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Not only are they all very \u201cAmber Heard bad woman Johnny Depp cool chill dude\u201d but the occasional appropriative edits (see: acrylics & wig) are embarrassing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The real question here is BOTS?! and the answer is yes-probz. The only folks that seem to have attempted a bot-calculation is a 3 person Israeli firm called Cyabra<\/a> which found around 11% of total trial social media posts about the trial to be from bots. This represents 10% of pro-Heard activity, coming from \u201c\u200b\u200buninterested third parties looking to promote a product,\u201d and 5% of pro-Depp<\/a> activity which seems to be anything but uninterested given that 93% of all accounts analyzed were pro-Depp.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Taking Cyabra\u2019s data at face value, 95% of the activity is from human people. This large proportion could indicate a genuine upwelling of support for Depp, but I don\u2019t think that\u2019s how viral internet content actually works. In fact, 5% of the 6.8 billion views that the #justiceforjohnnydepp hashtag has gotten on TikTok is still 340 million views, certainly enough to send a few videos on their way to pick up tons of human impressions. Cnet did some reporting on just how impactful this virality has been,<\/a> interviewing two creators who pivoted their entire YouTube channels to capitalize on the virality of Depp content, one of whom has garnered so many views that he\u2019s hoping to buy a home with the ad money. With a team of bots jump-starting your content to viral fame, it’s no wonder so many folks have flung themselves into the anti-Heard herd.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hindsight
<\/strong>Social media algorithms have been in the hot seat several times over the past few years, with the 2016 election, Q-Anon, and several other disinformation campaigns and conspiracies. But beyond all those, this banal celebrity defamation trial shows just how easy it is to game the algorithm and how powerful it can be. I witnessed this firsthand the other day when I brought up my YouTube recs at the pub and it triggered an exhaustive anti-Amber Heard tirade from someone who could not have had less skin in the game. This trial is not important or even interesting. Depp is no OJ and celebrity defamation suits are a dime a dozen. And it’s not like there aren\u2019t more<\/a>pressing<\/a>issues<\/a> to be discussed and fought over. If the so-called court of public opinion<\/em> is so easily swayed over such a trivial, settled matter, what happens when we\u2019re brought into session for something that matters?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

First GlanceI\u2019ve written here before about how terrible my YouTube recommendations are. It’s a point of pride how little the algorithm seems to know about me. But things have gotten much worse in my feed, namely all the Kitchen Nightmares clips and Doctor Mike reaction videos have been replaced with nonstop coverage of how terrible… Continue reading BOTS?!<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[22,31],"class_list":["post-784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-digestable","tag-culture","tag-internet","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gabriel.town\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gabriel.town\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gabriel.town\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gabriel.town\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gabriel.town\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=784"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gabriel.town\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/784\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":785,"href":"https:\/\/gabriel.town\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/784\/revisions\/785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gabriel.town\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gabriel.town\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gabriel.town\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}