Interference and Echo Chambers

Have you ever wondered if you are talking to the right people or just wasting your time?

I certainly have as you can probably tell from these articles here and here on fake Twitter accounts.

Also, I did wonder if my strategy of talking to SNP 1&2 voters was just a waste of time.

Guess what, it is a waste of time, but not for the reasons I first thought.

Initially, I thought it might be a waste of time because those voters may be so invested in the SNP that they wouldn't listen to or accept evidence that contradicted their world view.

But then I discovered how to view statistics for my blog and it looked like an interesting way to do a little experiment.

The statistics allow me to see what country the visitors to my blog come from, so I wondered what percentage of visitors actually had a vote in this upcoming Holyrood election.

I also wondered about some quite prolific anti-Alba Twitter accounts who claim to be in Scotland, so I came up with a little experiment.

This experiment was conducted before recent lockdown restrictions were lifted, so anybody who claimed to be in Scotland would have been unable to travel outwith Scotland.

So I picked 2 anti-Alba Twitter accounts and sent them a link to my latest blog at different times.

I deliberately sent the link as a reply to days old Twitter threads that had zero momentum.

This meant that in all likelihood the first people clicking the links would be the Twitter account holders themselves responding to the notification.

One link generated only one click, and they were NOT in Scotland.

The second link generated 3 clicks because the account holder had retweeted the link, and only one click had been in Scotland, and it was not the first click.

So out of 4 clicks, only 25% of the readers of the blog actually has a vote in this upcoming Holyrood election.

Two of the other clicks came from England and one from Northern Ireland.

Now I don't know if there could be a delay in reporting the clicks, but if I assume there is no delay then that means neither of these two accounts is in Scotland as they claim, and they are interfering in the Scottish election for some reason,

With my interest peaked I decided to try a second experiment.

So I picked a prominent anti-Alba and pro-Green pro-gender reform Twitter account and did the same again.

This time it came back from Germany!

So now I'm thinking I'm just wasting my time, I'm not talking to anyone who has a vote, they are all fakes.

So a few more experiments and here's what I found.

When I reply to anti-Alba SNP 1&2 accounts, 84% of the clicks come from England, 3% from Northern Ireland.

When I look at the replies to those accounts I see many of the same accounts popping up, and conducting experiments on those accounts over 90% are in England.

When I reply to pro-gender reform accounts there is a 30% increase in traffic from the USA.

When I post to everyone 72% are in Scotland.

So what can we learn from this?

It's a waste of time replying to SNP 1&2, SNP 1 Green 2 & pro-gender reform accounts.

In all likelihood, they do not have a vote because they do not live in Scotland.

The only possible reason to reply to these people is to counter the misinformation and lies they are spreading.

But even then, it very much looks like they are in their own massive echo chamber, talking to other fake accounts who are also trying to pervert the outcome of the Scottish elections.

So is Twitter a waste of time?

No, because you can still reach a high percentage of actual Scottish voters.

Sure many of them might already share your view, but by discussing the reasons for voting for Alba we all become better informed and more equipped to put those arguments forward to other voters we will meet in real life.

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