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sigmabody t1_j1b850h wrote

You gotta laugh a little at articles like this, which pretty much entirely miss the forest for the trees. Elon literally owns Twitter. He (or anyone he directs) could literally change the results of any poll on Twitter to reflect any outcome he wanted. For some unfathomable reason, many people, including actual journalists, just assume (without basis) that the polls are somehow not artificially manipulated in the first place, which would make all discussion of bots and outside influence entirely moot.

The platform itself isn't neutral and/or unbiased. Bots and outside manipulation is pretty much immaterial; who cares about bots, when the results can just be (and are likely) just set to reflect the opinion of the platform's owner(s).

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kkehoe5 t1_j1bry96 wrote

I’m sure if anyone at Twitter got wind of this actually happening, they’d whistle blow so hard to the cable news networks.

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sigmabody t1_j1bu1fo wrote

Really? You think within the ~1k people left there, all of whom fall into either the group of hardcore Elon believers who would sacrifice everything to work 80+ hours a week for him, or the group who are literally too scared of losing a visa and being deported to leave even with all the crazy mandates, there's going to be someone who is going to complain to the media that *gasp* the poll results might not be entirely accurate, and not just because of bots?

I might have some beach front property to sell you in the midwest, and I'll even discount it below the historically hot current property market...

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dead_alchemy t1_j1btm82 wrote

Too many counter examples of polls going against the wishes of the poller to assume this is a wide spread practice.

What makes you think it is likely? Aside from a sense of cynicism. Talking evidence.

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sigmabody t1_j1c2e9b wrote

I have no inside evidence of what's going in within Twitter (thankfully).

However, based on a pattern of behavior, I would have absolutely no reason to believe Elon would not alter any poll where the result might be significant to him (and to be clear, to date, there have not really been any such). I also think people read significance into decisions which really don't have much (eg: whoever would be the CEO of Twitter would report to the owner anyway, so whether or not that's Elon is largely immaterial to how Twitter would be run). It's not that I think there's a magnitude of evidence to suggest alteration of any poll is likely per se; it's that I think there's a complete lack of evidence that it wouldn't happen (if meaningful), and there's no reason to assume or ascribe some fantasy of integrity and/or impartiality within Twitter at this point. It's honestly laughable.

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dead_alchemy t1_j1ch4hh wrote

Ok, fair enough, narrowed down to “this particular company with this particular guy” I can only plead no contest.

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