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Mark Haslett
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Joined: 19 April 2004
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Posted: 22 May 2018 at 5:00pm | IP Logged | 1 post reply

After being asked to use my real name at this forum, I've taken to doing it where ever I go, under the simple notion that if I don't want to use my real name-- I'm probably not doing anything I'm really proud of.

Then 2016 happened: Bloomberg: Twitter bots helped Trump and Brexit Win

If only we were used to meeting real people online, we might not be so gullible when paid liars came after our elections.
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Robbie Parry
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Posted: 22 May 2018 at 5:46pm | IP Logged | 2 post reply

It is interesting, on Twitter, how the blank egg avatar, whose name is a random collection of letters and numbers, is often abusive whilst, say, the professor with whom you disagree with is often stern but fair.
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John Byrne
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Posted: 22 May 2018 at 8:13pm | IP Logged | 3 post reply

When I originally ventured online I was at first amused by the way users could choose multiple names. Seemed like fun.

Soon grew tired, tho, of trolls (as I learned they were called) hiding behind fake names, and sad souls who used character names, and insisted on being addressed as if they were those characters.

(When this website came into being I immediately insisted on real names all round -- which created some losers who delighted in announcing elsewhere that they had multiple names here and had "fooled everyone". How empty are those lives?)

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Bill Collins
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Posted: 22 May 2018 at 9:51pm | IP Logged | 4 post reply

I`m not sure Twitter bots affected the Brexit vote, if
you believe the news/media it was mainly the older
generation that voted for us leaving the EU, how many
older people are actually on Twitter, never mind
influenced by it? I am in my mid 50`s, am on Twitter,
but rarely visit.
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Charles Nelson
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Posted: 22 May 2018 at 10:37pm | IP Logged | 5 post reply

Interestingly, and quite innocently, it led to me being unable to post here for a period of time. I signed up using my professional name, which was also, quite obviously, a nickname. I was dropped in a purge of non real names. I wrote back, explained the mistake and was allowed back in, on the understanding that I would use my real name. The funny thing is, using my real name provides much more anonymity than using my nickname would. I know that is an exception that proves the rule, and understand the rule. I just found it it funny how it turned out. Just happy to be here.
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Rebecca Jansen
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Posted: 22 May 2018 at 11:01pm | IP Logged | 6 post reply

I don't want anything to do with facebook, and barely have ever looked at anything on twitter myself (the media keeps putting them on screen these days though). I have a truck-driver uncle who is on facebook through a mobile device and during the last U.S. election he would tell us about all sorts of very weird bad news about Hilary and strangely positive news about Donald J. Maybe he started to look at little legal disclaimers at the bottom of these pieces of shared 'news' that came to him online, or maybe he just began to question things, but I think he's gotten straight now. He was never one for vast conspiracies, alien abductions, nor deep state false flagging or whatever before then.

I think it's a good idea to use proper names and as close to proper English as we can manage. It should be cool to be intelligent, but so often throughout my life it actually has been considered more cool to be a punk, a slacker, a jackass (ow, what happened dude), a smartass etc. Oddly though, as an author and artist I have been published under some pen-names, anagrams and shortened form like 'Bex'. I have had some songs recorded under my legal name which you see here though.


Edited by Rebecca Jansen on 22 May 2018 at 11:03pm
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James Woodcock
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Posted: 22 May 2018 at 11:05pm | IP Logged | 7 post reply

Bill, I still maintain that old’it was the older generation that voted for Brexit is an oversimplification.
The Midlands was something like 80% no & just about every young person I spoke to was voting no.

I think people still need to look @ what happened that night, but honestly, if I get into a Brexit debate here, I’d probably end up go off the deep end. Just a mis-managed mess from start to finish
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Rebecca Jansen
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Posted: 22 May 2018 at 11:22pm | IP Logged | 8 post reply

It seemed to me that people were told things about what their Brexit vote would mean for them that were at best far from guaranteed to occur. Nigel Farage seemed to be pretty openly telling older people there would be more money to spend on health if the U.K. left the EU. Any extra colouring along those lines through internet media I would be unlikely to have seen way over here, I could only follow from afar and try to make out what staying and going would mean for people there and possibly elsewhere. There were definitely some tactics used during a referendum in Quebec on leaving Canada in more or less pre-internet times to muddy what yes/oui meant, and what no/non meant. A significant percentage of people were confused when interviewed afterwards as to what their vote was for or against. The head of the provincial separatist party at the time blamed immigrants/foreigners/minorities for their loss while the national head was more respectful in defeat.
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Bill Collins
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Posted: 23 May 2018 at 7:36am | IP Logged | 9 post reply

James, yes it`s an over simplification, my point was, i
doubt Twitter had much to do with it.Yes Brexit was and
is a total mess!
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Mark Haslett
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Posted: 23 May 2018 at 12:14pm | IP Logged | 10 post reply

Bill: James, yes it`s an over simplification, my point was, i doubt Twitter had much to do with it.

**

I was skeptical when I first heard the idea. Research and evidence is mounting to change my mind. It is a surprising thing, if true. But, if true, the danger it represents is frightening.
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