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good morning on Monday October 30th one day before spooky scary day scoop spooky Tuesday's Tuesday's it's the time for the 359 podcast it's episode 307 and today your hosts are alfred Inge and Ben factory Ruben hey what up I'm dressed as a man becoming a wall Wow I'm not dressed because it's not Halloween I'm gonna dull I'm probably not gonna be here tomorrow cuz I'm gonna take my kids out for Halloween but anyway we've got packed show today we're gonna be talking about a story Alfred wrote about that published today about Russian bot armies and how they make their content go viral also Jeff Bezos and the fact that he's now the world's richest person again and we'll wrap up yeah he was the world's richest person for like a hot second I think three months ago and we'll wrap up with Nintendo which had a really strong earnings thanks to the power of the switch anyway I send you your questions and comments we'll get to as many as we can at the end of the show and we'll get to the bodies and here we go in three two welcome to the 359 I'm Ben Fox Ruben I'm alfred Aang so there's been a lot written about Russian trolls influencing the 2016 US election using their BOTS armies Alfred you published a story today looking at how these trolls actually get their content to go viral tell me a little bit about this how does it actually work so they actually have a very unfair advantage when it comes to getting their topics on the trending topics on either your Facebook or your Twitter feeds one of the tactics and this is specifically for Twitter is that they have these this three-step attack process where it starts with Shepherd accounts which is like a whale account right yeah it's a big one it's basically like a large account I can like lead the direction and tone of what the fake trending topic is supposed to be and from there sheepdog accounts which are also run by people kind of retweet it and then there those are the retweets that like add like a second line or something like I knew it or Wow or like second look like it's organic yeah yeah and then that's when the bots Arnie army comes and that's the third step and been Nemo from the Atlantic a digital forensics lab you know council they basically call these accounts like electric sheeps because that's kind of they basically puff it up they puff it up to look like you know 30,000 people retweeted this and like this post and agreed with it when it's all like just BOTS the way that I've described this to my friends is basically imagine you're out of protest and then you know there's like so many people there's like 200 people there and then you know later on you find out that maybe like a hundred and eighty of them were actually like robots or Holograms or something this is kind of like the digital equivalent of that so like you see these trending topics like you see you know boycott NFL or something like that on Twitter or you see like the fake news that spreads and a lot of it is you know just because it has you know X amount of retweets doesn't exactly lend it legitimacy anymore well it's really hard to tell that so Twitter talks about how they've banned you know millions of bots a week they try finding these suspicious accounts but you know it gets harder to tell when it's run by an actual human being who's like directing this so that's kind of what I wanted to ask too is is this practice not allowed by Twitter or face no it's not I mean because it's essentially gaming their algorithm on Facebook they use their bot army in a different way where they have you know direct like wording for it on on specific fake news so they figure out a long time ago that Facebook's algorithm rewards engagement so if I post something and nobody likes it or anything it kind of disappears from your newsfeed in like an hour but if I post something that's like kind of outrageous and then all these people comment on it basically I'm like you're wrong and then like other people they start arguing with each other it keeps getting bumped up so they figured why are we you know sending these faking it like bots to comment on things that we want to bury when we should be having them argue with each other on things that we want exposed so they sent these fake bots like to during the the height of the Ukraine like Russia conflict instead of trying to bury like embassy an official government post they started promoting fake fights on their own fake news this was back in 2014 yeah yeah yeah and you know if you notice the spread of fake news on Facebook like a lot of that is still going on now so I want to get to this question pretty quickly because we have some other stories - but is there anything that we can do to prevent this or slow it down at all I mean I think it's important to check the sources on a lot of things I think it's a weird argument to say stop commenting on Facebook and Twitter because I think that's part of what they want is like they want radio silence that's also a win for them I just think you know if you're looking at the the source of where the argument is beginning with like you know trace it back to who like the Shepherd account is and then you see from there next Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is now the world's richest person he outpaced Bill Gates after Amazon stocks surged Friday his net worth no joke Rosen estimate 10 billion dollars in one day so with the time that we have is Amazon now too big and does Jeff have too much money no you know like you could ask the same question about Microsoft you know like four or five days ago like is Microsoft tubing and do that too much money with like Bill Gates I think you know they have a lot of large projects and things like that that they're working on and quite clearly they need the money for it yeah they definitely need the money by Jeff if you want to send me any of that money go ahead or just continue to break champagne bottles on windmills that's that's another idea also another company that's making a lot of money is Nintendo which reported some very solid earnings Monday thanks to the Nintendo switch it looks like Nintendo is back in play I think the Wii U really wasn't that strong and they came back really well with the switch you had some time to mess around with it right it's a great console I guess not time believe it we'll leave it there if you want to read more about these stories check us out on CNN I'm Ben Fox Ruben I'm alfred Aang thanks for listening all right thanks for puttering around with us for four minutes guys we're gonna go ahead and I'm gonna jump into the chat they got some good questions and comments until then talks amongst yourselves I wanted to talk way more about the switch then yeah thank you like pushing me along yes yeah we were we started the timer yeah so I think the reason why the switch has like gotten to such prominence for Nintendo is like graphics wise and like hardware wise the switch isn't really that much better than the PS Vita but I think you know I think they've really like paid a lot of attention to how people want to play games and you know the types of games that people want because I think they're realizing that you know people aren't just like sitting at home anymore and like just playing on their on their like he's all about mobile well yeah I mean there's that but it's also like you can't just make mobile games that aren't like really that good and I think that's where the PS Vita kind of lost on this even though they had the hardware to support like Nintendo right now is looking at - game of the years on this one console within the first like year of its release when I would be Mario Odyssey and uh it would be Mario Odyssey okay breath of the wild those are like - already like top tier like gaming campaigns and like for their launch and you know a lot of the times like like the best game for a console will maybe come out like within the second year or so when like studios have kind of figured out what like when you really start hitting your pace yeah like yeah they've hit like two home runs already on the switch so they've got a lot of things going on for them with the switch I would probably argue that with with the switch before the switch came out and before Nintendo really started to get it noticed with its mini consoles like the NES classic and the SNES classic they looked like they were getting lapped pretty badly by Sony and Microsoft which are too much much bigger companies they're always much more graphics heavy yeah they're games they were getting beat like hardware wise and also sales and also games so they were getting bad movie back and the Wii U was not a good console I mean yeah it didn't resonate it felt like the Wii U was kind of like training wheels for the switch I totally agree but the Wii U just wasn't quite there yet and you know I think a lot of people are really you know gunning for a Nintendo they want to see Nintendo succeed because it is a smaller player in a much bigger market where Sony and Microsoft are really kind of these much bigger juggernauts it's becoming apples and oranges though you know the Nintendo crew they're the grandfather's of it they're always been about innovating the experience yeah not so much we're gonna man that games possible or the graph they've never been known for graphics which is okay they've been known for artistic integrity so as far as blowing your mind with next-generation realism and everything no that's that's not their play yeah but like want you to play yeah but like you take it there clearly like they know what gamers want now when you look at it like the sandbox style that you have in both Super Mario Odyssey and breadth of the wild there's there's you know they're clearly shifting to to you know you know meet people's demands yeah yeah I wish I had more time to like spend which swing Super Smash Brothers for the switch it'll come it'll be here let's talk a little bit about Amazon you know we we know that Bezos now owns the earth and I mean oh the action of Whole Foods was such a I don't know to me that still seem like a bizarre play but ultimately it definitely paid out for them in the short term that really only happened a couple months ago I'm just curious so you know what what would be next that would are they going to throw another kind of Hail Mary like that or there have been like so many rumors lately that they plan on buying another traditional retailer I don't really know that that's where their head is like where they would buy like JC Penney or Nordstrom or the holes by the world's water supply where they could buy the world's water supply and then and Mad Max I think you are from Philadelphia aren't you I I did accidentally say wooder was way back in the day I trained myself not to say wooder but I guess I would say slipped oh yeah you know I am from where I am I never picked up on any kind of regional accent from you and so right now till now um so I think what what often gets lost in these discussions is that online retail is still only ten percent of total sales on retail people buy a ton of stuff in brick-and-mortar but in general there are too many stores there are too many brick-and-mortar stores now and it does make sense to a certain extent that some of them will shut down or go bankrupt and only the strong will survive and Amazon is definitely gaining an advantage from a lot of money shifting over to e-commerce but there's still much smaller than a lot of people I think realize and if we were having a discussion like this maybe we wouldn't because like we're tech publication but Walmart was being discussed a lot while they were in a huge growth trajectory maybe ten years ago no exactly and I mean not to vilify anybody but that's that simple capitalism yeah so I think it seems likely to me that somebody is gonna catch up to Amazon to a certain extent they're probably not gonna be able to keep growing like this and know eventually I think not a steam and and I think that like the Whole Foods thing the the jury is still out as far as like whether they actually know how to properly operate a brick-and-mortar store because they know how to operate warehouses but this is one where you know you got you have to have cashiers window washers people stocking the shelves you're not gonna do the whole thing with robots I just wonder if you're gonna be able to get her make you think maybe they will the Amazon experience begins to mirror itself in a wholefoods experience you know like you get a buy it buy it later kind of option put on your queue go and get the quinoa like people who bought quinoa also bought walking around behind you be giving you like a theme park that's it the next thing for Amazon is gonna be like a theme park or selling so just to throw out some additional numbers so as of Friday Jeff Bezos says total net worth was ninety three point eight billion dollars and Bill Gates don't feel too bad for him because his was eighty eight point seven billion but here's here's - can besos match gates in charity contributions right so that's didn't he I'm not saying he hasn't tried I'm saying that he's gonna start looking into it but it's true that Bill Gates has absolutely given away more of his money than he's it's just so funny that Jeff Bezos you know a man with that Smart has to go on Twitter and ask hey do you wonder some things I should contribute to maybe like I think it was a smoke screen yeah I mean like my conspiracy theory on that was they announced the whole food steal I think the next day and Jeff was trying to get people to think about philanthropy and where he's gonna put tens of billions of dollars so that they didn't look into the fact that Whole Foods was about to happen right that makes a lot of sense yeah maybe maybe it could just be a conspiracy I have no proof that that's actually what was happening so let's let's reaffirm the detail James favors asking why did the stock go up for Amazon on Friday it was a good question it was third quarter results they were expected to have a pretty measly profit in their third quarter which is generally one of their biggest investing quarters they open a lot of warehouses they planned a lot of seeds so that their holiday ends up being stronger that's the fourth quarter where they make most of their money instead of a really bad profit or a really tiny one they ended up posting a much bigger one than expected and that drove the stock way way up total sales were also higher than anticipated as well in general they've been on an uptick for how many years how they rode double digits I think they haven't been like on a sales side they've been growing double digits I think since they went public yeah they they absolutely have been at least since since I've been covering them for the past two years and it's like not just double digits like eleven percent sales increases like twenty percent plus so yeah they're growing really quickly we're almost out of time it's been interesting more interesting to discuss this and I honestly anticipated so they've been for educating us and that Thank You Alfred for covering the rush controls I think that that's really interesting to me thank you very much for explaining all that in less than four minutes yeah well you do a really good job actually kind of bringing it down to the like a layman's level because right now it just looks like we're doomed yeah I'm just very paranoid now of commenting on anything on like Twitter or Facebook just like this is like a real issue or it's because like that was part of their operations where they like had like fake LGBTQ groups that um groups fake like black lives matter groups they had you know they pretend it to be like a gun rights advocate group and they all just like arguing with each other and stuff and like setting up these rallies that like they themselves weren't really going to just like having people go to them so it gets to a point where okay I don't know I don't know like if there's like a real thing or if I'm like supporting like a Russian thing because like a lot of really smart people have fallen for this kind of stuff if you look at on Twitter with that ten GOP account like Roger stone who is now banned on Twitter had like tweeted with them a bunch of times and this was a Russian connected IKEA and with over a hundred other things there was like no like indication that that was what it was you know it was just you know everyone just thought it was like a legitimate like you know Trump supporting like like Twitter group am I wrong to think that Facebook and Twitter are the ones that should be blamed for a lot of this and really kind of dropped the ball I mean they kind of gave her a slap form but like it's another thing to say like how would they know as well you know if they're not like tweeting directly out there like I still don't know how they got caught to be honest but it might have been an IP address thing or something like that but it was just one other thing like how like it's it's it's not harder to tell like it used to be very simple it's like that's clearly a bot account but now that it's like real person lots of followers lot of counts as the one like kind of puffing them up it's kind of like anchor arms from like punch Bob it's kind of like they're doping how do people know we really exist like how do they know that this podcast is the thing it's like very possible we might be BOTS I'm just I have more followers if that works take it easy isaac asimov alright let's end things on a lighter note just couldn't resist this one sorry Ben Dre Frey says I want Ben to say Mario eats a pizza to hear how not to say either word oh you didn't make me say what are those so Mario eats a pizza it's that that's how you say it wait Dre Frey what was wrong with Ben's pronunciation of pizza I want to know I'm not gonna wait around he's an Italian plumber obviously he eats pizzas or mushrooms I just every time you and Jeff talk about it it just sends chill up my spine what Jeff also says Mary oh yeah yeah he's from like yeah all right now I get it there's like the accent and the jersey thing which would be acceptable if the game didn't open with him saying it's a me Mario know what this is this is are you laughs in the face is here this podcast where you instead of a Horry oh yeah you know what I'm just not even gonna I'm not even gonna comment about this I'm just not even gonna respect this with a response hey look right but I'm gonna give ya way Luigi you guys you guys can dunk on me all you want I have people out there including Jeff that agree with me no I keep saying it if you feel like purposefully mispronouncing a person's name who has demonstrated how they prefer you to say it to them then I'm gonna take freewill bean bean Fox Ruby I caught him getting dunked on Hart we should set up a pole this is this makes for good podcast except for the fact that I may start crying let's get out and that's what takes us into a great podcast alright anyway obviously we have to talk about Mario Mario again sometime soon thanks everybody for joining us this was a fun podcast if you want to listen to this podcast or watch it it's available in have been more right it's available on iTunes tune in stitcher SoundCloud Feedburner Google Play Music and of course see me calm shoot I've seen that doc thanks everybody for watching see you again for Halloween tomorrow