Hi, Mike Miller!
I read your message from 09.08.2018 12:20

  ak>> And, second -- those fake Russians on Facebook could not influence
  ak>> the elections just for a simple reason -- the absence of
  ak>> reputation. I, for instance, can also say many ugly things about
  ak>> Clinton and Trump. But who am I so that the Americans consider me
  ak>> as a valuable source of information? Only fools can.

  MM> I don't think you understand how the Internet, and specifically
  MM> social media works.

  MM> One idiot says something idiotic. Another idiot reads the first
  MM> sentence, agrees with it, and re-shares it. other idiots follow
  MM> suit. Suddenly "Alexander Koryagin is Batman!" is out there, and
  MM> people start thinking you're batman, even if you deny it.

If a person from a crowd wants to be heard by many he should be higher 
than the crowd. There are a lot of idiots and a lot of them tries to 
beget rumors. You get just noise in this case.

  MM> making things go "viral" organically is happens largely by chance.
  MM> The right amount of people with the right subset of followers need
  MM> to see it at the right times. Chances can be increased when you
  MM> have thousands of fake accounts/bots that all re-tweet, or re-share
  MM> things from other accounts.

No. It is a hard work to make your account popular and respected. 
Anonymous blabbers don't have any influence.

  MM>  That information begins getting pushed
  MM> into people's feeds, and real people start believing it to be true
  MM> because they have the attention span of a spastic dog surrounded by
  MM> tennis balls, as they refuse to do anythn other than read the
  MM> sensationalist headline.

Once again -- it is important who spread rumors.

  MM> It just takes one "e-famous" person to re-tweet or share an untruth
  MM> for it to really gain traction, because all that persons followers
  MM> believe the e-famous person has done his or her due diligence and
  MM> checked to make sure whatever they are posting is accurate.

What's it, at last. But who was that Russian "e-famous person" when they 
speak about Russian influence via Facebook?

  MM> That is the current state of The Internet today. In my opinion, we
  MM> should burn it all down and start over.

The Internet social networks are mirrors of people. You start again and 
you will get the same. If people want something new they should change. 
At least they should start de0spise rumors.

Bye, Mike!
Alexander Koryagin
fido7.fidonews 2018
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