Polarization Engineering

Block lists get gamed to drive polarization.

I started programming the Twitter API using CURL clear back in 2008. This gave way to a Perl application that took inputs from Google Sheets. It had a wake/sleep cycle, it was smart enough to mute itself when the accounts of causes it served were active, and it had pseudorandom output time. The client’s website was in the application name and the accounts it ran were overtly bots, akin to the intro at the start of a voice menu. A couple times an hour during the wake period bots would announce upcoming events, or URLs to earned media, a very archaic mode of use in 2024.

The earliest backup of the Python based Twitter streaming software I developed dates to August of 2013. The Twitter API started going sideways as soon as Space Karen bought the company and the free tier was eliminated in April of 2023. Even now I get periodic requests for various things, but without sensible API access, there’s no point.

One of the things that happened in this environment were curated block lists that offered a free subscription. Some of them were legitimate, but many of them were used to partition audiences and keep them apart. I knew little about this at the time, because I had my own very powerful way to do that as a side effect of having eighty accounts streaming content from the site.

I have a low serial number Bluesky account, which I haven’t used much, but during the post election Twitter exodus I decided to log in and see what’s happening.

And those same block list tactics creating bubbles of like minded, chronically overstimulated folk are readily visible. Let’s call it “polarization engineering” …

Attention Conservation Notice:

This is going to have computational social science stuff in it, stopping short of including Python code snippets. If you aren’t messing with Gephi or similar tools, this is probably going to make your eyes cross.

Bluesky Today:

Here is what set me off writing this … the ClearSky lists report on my account.

So I’m on a bunch of lists that contain a lot of legitimate bad guys, but I've been added to constrain my reach. People are talking about these lists and I suspect Bluesky will have a competitive environment - “clean” list purveyors are going to win out over the #DivisionOps types.

Bluesky has previously shown some intense disinterest in having their platform gamed. But American free speech sensibilities are causing the platform to be … an enormous public watering hole … a partisan campaign environment … and it’s diversifying enough to start drawing a legitimate crowd of right leaning users.

I don’t care for any sort of media that isn’t reality based, unless it’s intentional entertainment. This puts me at odds with both the left and the right at times, but I feel that natural facts are a better basis for judgment than political facts. Top example: can’t say “climate change” in Florida, despite Mother Nature kicking their butts on an at least biannual basis.

But post election, Twitter links almost disappeared from my associates - they’re preferentially using Bluesky for legacy corporate media. (No such thing as mainstream media any more, yes?)

Countermeasures:

Since the Twitter implosion I haven’t programmed anything social media related, I’m focusing on AI and document caches. I could check out the Bluesky API, but that would quickly lead to attention shredding, unremunerative online conflict, and lets recall I formerly had a phone number: 706-47-TROLL. While I do have cyberscuffle skills, I have no interest in spending time that way.

But it would not be a huge job to open up the Twitter streaming code and modify it to handle a different stream of timestamped JSON. I could just post the code on Github or something, but it’s not finished enough to have randos download it, it’s still very much a one man horse. And by making it available that would set off another round of anklebiter antics on Twitter. So maybe let’s NOT do that …

What might work is … a list curators guild. The people who make those block lists should have a code of ethics and a clear cut way to get a mistaken listing fixed. They should probably do a pair - a very focused list, and then a broader companion. The first should be humans or closely tended cyborgs who are creating problems, while the second could include all bots spotted pushing their overall message(s).

Conclusion:

The only reason I logged back into Bluesky was the latest Twitter exodus. I concentrate on 1) activities that will pay 2) activities that will get me cited in major news outlets and 3) writing quality content here. That last one has aspects of both financial benefit and increased reach to people whose opinions matter to me.

When I joined Bluesky, among the first 125k users, I found a pack of the usual fucktards from Twitter were trying to revive the comically compromised Anonymous brand. I blocked about a hundred of them right away, then picked off the latecomers, during the few months I actively used it.

If you’ve been around a while you will have seen me mention of “2012 envy”. There are a bunch of people who weren’t around for the 2011-2012 Anonymous heyday, so they claim that they were. They pretend to have had involvement in things of which they have no real knowledge, they make up fantastical tales involving people I’ve never even heard of, and how they really did things where I was actually the prime mover.

I am a fan of a number of artists who performed at Woodstock, but that happened when I was still in diapers. It’s less common now, but if you traveled in jam band circles back before the turn of the century, you’d find people who were literally not born yet, talking about how great it was to be there.

The latest exodus has been good in two regards - people who formerly sent me 100% Twitter links to news items I’d care about are now sending about 75% Bluesky links. So even if I don’t use it more than occasionally posting funny YouTube animal videos, getting Xitter (say: shitter) even further out of my life is a big win.

And that second reason? Given the impending change in administration and all of the clout chasers yapping about “resistance”, I am 101% sure we’re going to see an FBI driven effort to revive Anonymous and start herding n00bs into the profiling zone.