Heads Gone (The 8MileBU Awards)

[Bairnardo]

Fucking hell man, those quoted posts....

 

Marshy trying so hard, yet being so utterly pathetic at trying to be a playground bully is one of the weirdest, long running tragedies iv seen on this site. 

[Marshmallo]

"Tragedies" - now it's Shakespearean!

The amount of time we are wasting on discussing a red button is madness. I'll maybe come back for a look in here later today but, even in a locked down environment, I've got better uses of my time than this.

Eg = Watching Paint Dry !

[19QOS19]

Yeah,
Yer usual red dotting aficionado likes to labour the point that they are not obsessed as it takes no effort to dot posts....
Not sure this particular poster can stand behind that one. 
Still, the aliases kicked off after the poster Junior Pub League (himself a probable alias) had a tear stained meltdown at me for something I posted about Tories, possibly them catching covid. 
If these red dots represent my blood in the battle with the Conservative and Unionist Party I shall wear them with pride. 

Username "Aficionardo" incoming.

[bennett]

27 minutes ago, Marshmallo said:

The Reputation System is put in place to signal either agreement or disagreement with a post or poster. I don't understand why people get so animated about it, talking about "wars" or "battles".

Pie and Bovril is a fun way to pass time. People should remember that. 

Doesn't come across as an enjoyable forum experience for you, most of the time you appear to be quite stressed.

[Bert Raccoon]

This is grim. I'd imagine watching your pets die in a house fire would be less painful to watch.

[Marshmallo]

16 minutes ago, ali_91 said:

Not nice to see Marshmallo being persecuted by the same culprits yet again today. 
 

Stay strong brother, bullies never win. 

Complete and utter tossers mate.

[Melanius Mullarkey]

55 minutes ago, Sport socks and scampi said:

Red paint never fully dries.   

Especially on a maroon shirt.

Or some shit or another.

[Boghead ranter]

1 hour ago, Bert Raccoon said:

This is grim. I'd imagine watching your pets die in a house fire would be less painful to watch.

Berto Raccoono

FTFY

[Shandon Par]

What a way to spend your Sunday.

[heedthebaa]

7 minutes ago, Shandon Par said:

What a way to spend your Sunday.

It’s Sunday ??

[Bigmouth Strikes Again]

 

[Granny Danger]

17 minutes ago, Sport socks and scampi said:

You have a poor reputation rate which suggests your postings have not been an enjoyable experience for the masses?    Do you think you can improve your goal difference?  

Don’t refer to posters’ reputation rate.  It’s not nice.

[Moomintroll]

3 hours ago, Bairnardo said:

Got a temporary ban during that time he found his level and had a meltdown over Rab B Nesbit

Tbf, I think we all had a meltdown because of Rab at one point or another.

[Moomintroll]

What fresh alias hell is Sports socks and scampi then?

[Marshmallo]

Just now, Perkin Flump said:

What fresh alias hell is Sports socks and scampi then?

Pretty sure it's a @newcastle broon alias mate.

[Moomintroll]

1 minute ago, Sport socks and scampi said:

You spelt the username wrong you perkin flump.    

Oops, I do apologise.

[bennett]

9 minutes ago, Marshmallo said:

Pretty sure it's a @newcastle broon alias mate.

Samuel  Smith's Nut brown ale?

 

[newcastle broon]

1 hour ago, Marshmallo said:

Pretty sure it's a @newcastle broon alias mate.

??

[ICTChris]

5 hours ago, Speroni*1 said:

In a slightly more serious note, is there not some conspiracy going on that the Tory party made up lots of fake AI-controlled Twitter accounts to support the government during this crisis?

 

4 hours ago, Granny Danger said:

More a fact than a conspiracy I think.

It's highly likely to be untrue.  The story came about and was referred to on either the Covid or Twitter threads after an activist posted a thread on Twitter claiming that they had evidence that a number of Twitter accounts claiming to be NHS staff had been set up by people close to the Ministry of Health, or employed by them.  These accounts were supposedly set up to tweet support for the government during the Covid crisis.  As way of evidence the activist linked to an account he said was part of this network and said that he had evidence of dozens, possibly over 100 accounts set up for this purpose using the tool Hootsuite.  The account claimed to be from a nurse linked to a specific hospital trust and used a photograph of a real NHS nurse as it's profile picture.  Peter Jukes and Carole Cadawallar retweeted or publicised the thread, giving it tens of thousands of shares and likely millions of views.

However, when people started ot look into the story the picture became less clear.  The only account identified was the one claiming to be a nurse working for a specific NHS Trust.  That account was reported by the Trust as fake and suspended by Twitter.  The image used of the nurse was taken from the public website of a trade union (Unison I think but I'd have to check).  The content of the account was a little odd, it seemed to be a parody account of "woke culture".  If you are on Twitter you've probably seen some of these accounts, Titania McGrath is the best known account like this.  The account claimed to be a transitioning nurse fighting covid on behalf of the non-binary and trans community.  It posted about banning clapping because it could cause people to be triggered and it discriminated against the deaf.  The account seemed more like a crappy troll account than anything set up to back the government.  The Department of Health denied it, Twitter said there was no evidence of a network, Hootsuite denied it and said there is no way for anyone to see who has set up what account on their platform.

The only evidence that was put forward at the time, and the only evidence that has been made public at all, is the single account that was banned.  No other accounts have been identified by anyone as being part of a fake network of government supporting NHS employees.  The fact checking organisation Full Fact wrote an article about this (https://fullfact.org/online/evidence-network-fake-nhs-tweets/ ).  No-one has identified any of these accounts and there is no evidence of any further fake accounts, a network, a conspriacy, any sort of campaign.  In addition, Full Fact revelaed that previously the activist in question had issued false information about a leak of documents from UK - US trade negotiations, where he claimed that damning information was included in an appendix to the leaked documents that didn't exist.

When given the opportunity to reply, the activist who publicised the initial thread claimed that he had evidence of the accounts but that he didn't have them in a presentable form and that his team of 31 specialists were working on fully fact checking the documentation.  All the specialists are anonymous.  It's worth noting that many national newspapers probably have fewer staff than that working at the moment.  The Boston Globe Spotlight team who won the Pulitizer Prize and inspired the film had five journalists.  IN addition to this, if you have a list of Twitter accounts you think are bots then there isnothing to stop you publicising these claims.  The idea that the data needs to be significantly parsed or analysed or cleaned up doesn't really stand up.  You could easily publish this information in a way that protected you legally.  The original tweeter who posted about this is still tweeting furiously about all sorts and claims that his team of anonymous experts is still working on this.  Maybe he will publish a full expose and reveal that it's true and that his decision to publicise this without any evidence was a clever ploy to get attention.  

I am very interested in conspiracy theories and how they spread and I think that this story is a good example of how they do.  I saw loads of people refer to or retweet this story, it got huge traction.  But there is no evidence and if you look at it logically it's highly unlikely to be true.  A lot of the people who retweeted it will likely believe it no matter what and there will be no consequences for the guy who posted it.  What a strange world we live in now.  

[ICTChris]

^^^^ Heads gone