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ThinkingSlow has been monitoring Twitter traffic to expose the workings of a major bot operation which aims to amplify The Great Reset policy agenda by increasing “followers,” “likes” and “retweets” of selected accounts.

Automated, or so-called bot, traffic is a significant problem on Twitter’s social media platform, ThinkingSlow stated in a press release on Friday. The traffic is created by automated and semi-automated accounts and used to amplify selected individuals and political messages. This amplification serves a malevolent purpose of manipulating the general public into believing that certain policies are significantly more popular than they are in reality.

They have prepared a downloadable document showing an overview of how these bots work:

Around about 30,000 bots amplify the comments on the relevant individuals that are “on message” and their traffic by a factor of around 100x or more.

There can be several possible explanations, but we are NOT assigning any single explanation. Possibilities include, but are not limited to:

• Beneficiaries pay to boost volumes.
• Algorithms choose based on their own criteria.
• The beneficiary can be aware or unaware of the role of bots.

We are not commenting on who is operating the bot farm … Our assumption is that both Twitter and the relevant cyber security authorities are aware of these activities and have chosen not to prevent them.

Welcome to the world of Twitter bots (pdf), ThinkingSlow, August 2022

Two types of bots have been identified:

• Covert– covered in symbols appealing to a group and another.
• Overt – largely blank profile (likes only).

The image below gives an example of each.

In the video below, ThinkingSlow explained the investigation they’ve been conducting, at the global level, relating to these Twitter bots and what impact it has:

“The reason we want to spend a lot of time on this is because people need to understand that these bot farms do not just create themselves and they don’t run themselves. Someone, specifically, is running these bot farms to amplify specific messages, for specific people, at specific times and they have a purpose in mind for doing that.  This is not random noise. 

“So, what we’re seeing over and over again with these bot farms that we’re looking at now is they are amplifying Great Reset/ far-left messages … nationalisation, more government intervention through censorship, climate alarmism … There’s something quite sinister going on by people actually running these operations.

“The purpose is quite clear.  It’s applied psychology.  It’s making unpopular policies appear hundreds of times, maybe thousands of times, more popular than they are in reality.”

Click on the image below to watch the video on Rumble.

By benchmarking three MPs against their nearest peers (see images below), ThinkingSlow demonstrated the magnitude to which these bots amplify messages.  Please note the third image should be titled “Impact on bot boost Followers and Likes per tweet for Ed Davey compared to adjacent Liberal Democrat constituencies.”

On Friday, ThinkingSlow submitted a complaint to the Commissioner for Standards concerning the manipulation of Twitter traffic on the accounts of four Members of Parliament (“MP”): Zarah Sultana, Chris Bryant, Richard Burgon and Ed Davey.

Based on ThinkingSlow’s extensive analysis of Twitter traffic volumes, the accounts of the above MPs have been identified as recipients of significant automated traffic volumes.

The tweets of these MPs receive something in the region of 5,000 likes per tweet as compared to well-known UK journalists and academics receiving not more than 400 likes per tweet. The level of 5,000 likes per tweet is around 180x higher than other MPs in adjacent constituencies; such anomalies point to automated amplification, ThinkingSlow stated.

Based on samples of likes and retweets (RTs) for the above MPs, we have determined that around 50% to 80% of the likes and RTs for specific tweets are automated and not generated by genuine users.

We have asked the Commissioner for Parliamentary Standards to investigate these claims under the provisions of section V of the Code of Conduct for Members of Parliament as well as looking at a possible breach of the general principle that MPs act with “probity and integrity.”

Press Release (pdf), ThinkingSlow, 7 October 2022

ThinkingSlow’s complaint to the Commissioner for Parliamentary Standards stated:

In the political arena, the primary purpose [of this bot traffic] is to manipulate the viewing public and we believe that this is what the above-mentioned Boosted MPs are allowing to be done (and/or are doing) with the aim of deceiving Twitter users and the general public. This conduct is not consistent with each MP’s obligations under the Code of Conduct, in particular with respect to the overall obligation to act with “probity and integrity”.

Social media activity clearly forms a significant part of the Boosted MPs’ public communication and these activities would therefore fall within the scope of public, rather than private, life. Each of the above-named MPs has produced many thousands of tweets, with the highest figure for Chris Bryant MP with an astounding total of 81.4 thousand tweets. We believe that the enormous level of falsified amplification of the Boosted MPs’ tweets represents a breach of the overall requirement to act with integrity and, specifically, paragraph 17 of section V of the Code.

There may be a related breach of Parliament’s ICT Use Policy, given that such amplification represents a breach of Twitter’s Terms and Conditions, but that is outside the scope of this complaint.

We ask that you investigate these claims and, if confirmed, require the above-named Boosted MPs to make public statements acknowledging the use of automated Twitter traffic, as well as taking steps to stop the amplification of their tweets.

Letter of Complaint to Office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards (pdf), 5 October 2022

About ThinkingSlow

ThinkingSlow is a working group created in response to the dishonest “science” behind the Covid response.  They explore the real agendas behind the Covid response and future trajectories.

“We have invested thousands of hours into researching Covid itself and the staggering levels of dishonesty around the data, the policy response and media reporting. Those findings are presented [on their website] under the blocks of Covid-19, Statistics, Ethics (and Law), and Great Reset. Most recently we have started a series of interviews about those subjects with some of the world’s and the UK’s leading thinkers.”

Their basic aims and objectives can be found HERE and if you think you would like to be involved, please send a few words, no more than 30-50 words, to ThinkingSlow1@Proton.me.