How We Select Top Tweets

We’ve selected the top most engaging news articles on Twitter from Australian news media. The selection criteria are based on logical fallacies statistics detected in the retweets and comments to original news tweet.

Critical Concentration

“Just another day in the office. Video coming soon…”

The response contains approximately 48% of comments that look a lot like fallacious reasoning of any type our detector can recognise. Spread between reasoning type groups:

Logical Fallacies Composition

Avi Yemini is a reporter from Rebel News who is regulary being ‘approached’ by police and other people who do not like publicity around government overreach, liberal democratic values, people rights of freedom of speech and protest, bodily autonomy etc.

Examples of logical fallacies from responses, yes mostly ad hominem:

Yep, you’re still a piece of sh!t. No wonder you keep a thug with you.

You’re a public nuisance! Harassing people! What an ar…le

Combined Name-Calling and False Dilemma example:

Would love to see you walk around without a bodyguard you little p..sy, or it only women you’re happy to fight by yourself?

Triggering News

Comments to this twit has the highest rate of Name Calling and Ad Hominem.

In this reference to the person, name-calling, and identity politics trigger group during last week, the most prominent tweet was from @newscomauHQ

“ABC presenter Tony Armstrong has questioned Quinton de Kock’s ‘confounding’ call to withdraw from a match and avoid taking a knee…”

The response contains approximately 44% of comments that look a lot like Ad Hominem Attacks. The spread controversial arguments between logical fallacy groups:

Logical Fallacies Composition

Main message from the public - Sports people should play sport and shouldn’t play politics. Cricketer Quinton de Kock seems to have had very alligning opinion about this with the public at the moment. Wiki says:

De Kock explained that he had originally decided not to take the knee because of the way in which Cricket South Africa had handled the issue by mandating that all players take the knee shortly before the match against the West Indies. However, he returned to the side for South Africa’s next match, against Sri Lanka, and took the knee before the start of play.

Tony Armstrong is a former proffessional Australian rules footballer and now TV presenter. He is of Aboriginal descent, started working in media in 2020 and voiced surprise that De Kock didn’t take a knee… From the same wiki:

In September 2010, Armstrong was caught by police drink driving at over four times the legal limit. He had his driver’s licence suspended for one year and his car was impounded. Additionally, the Adelaide Crows fined him $5,000 and suspended him for four matches.

Examples of Argumentum ad Hominem and Argumentum ad Personam from the comments

Tony Armstrong is a racist. BLM is a group of woke lef..rd victim mentality cowards. ALL LIVES MATTER

Get off your knees you grovelling woke morons.

Tony Tony Tony, you are stating someone is racist for not conforming to something you want or believe in. What does that make you

Food for Thoughts

In this smart argument category - where comments contain a lot of reasoning that looks really like Argumentum ad Ignorantiam, Reduction to Absurd, Conspiracy Theory, Fallacy of Composition, Fallacy of Division or False Dichotomy Fallacy.

Last week, the most worth reading tweet in this group was from @:

“COVID conspiracies are tearing apart relationships across the country. What can we…”

The response contains approximately 6% of comments that look a lot like logical fallacies of the types listed above. The distribution between this and other groups of reasoning types:

Logical Fallacies Composition

On the mass media there was a lot of articles and news bits pushing government narative. For example “pandemic of unvaccinated” one. People are questioning the nessecity of mandating experimental vaccines’ with unknown efficacy and unknown side-effects. Questioning harsh lockdowns, fines and other measures. Another trend in msm is to call those non-believers a conspiracy theorists.

A couple examples of Conspiracy Theory Fallacy from the comments (or at least how our fallacy finder detected those):

It’s not a conspiracy, the only conspiracy that makes sense that governments are in bed with pharmaceuticals. PCR testing are corrupted, and there is 99% recovery rate.

Maybe, ABC should look into them. There’s a couple of pretty mind blowing investigative stories among it all. Like the global censorship of early treatment, Suppression of Doctors who have been disempowered to treat their patients early & a pretty damning money trail to follow

Emotional Response

Inspiring in comments something that looks really like Appeal to Emotion.

In this Emotional Appeal category last week, the most worth reading tweet was from @newscomauHQ:

“The deputy premier of NSW has savaged a new rule being introduced in Victoria, describing the change as…”

The response contains approximately 17% of comments that look a lot like emotional appeals. To compare with other groups:

Logical Fallacies Composition

Government is frequently introducing new measures to “flatten the curve”, “fight the desease”, “follow the science” now. New measure is to demand primary school students wear the face masks in school. The government calls these measures “rules” but still hasn’t produced any reasoning and evidence what goal and how this measure would achieve. Parents are calling these measures “child abuse”.

A couple Appeal to Emotion examples:

Yep it’s CHILD ABUSE. Allowing your child to breath in its own filth is beyond abnormal.

Destroying a basic communication development skill for children, facial expressions, happiness, sadness, excitement, concern, finally eroding confidence, and hope. Let’s just pray, this won’t lead to children living in fear & lacking social communication skills?

Status Quo Group Spirit

Inspiring readers for some arguments that look like contain these logical fallacies Appeal to Authority Appeal to Tradition, Bandwagon, Slippery Slope or Hasty Generalization. In this class last week, the most prominent piece of news was

““I can’t do this any more” were the most spoken words in Melbourne last week. As September turned into October, and the reality hit that there are still weeks of lockdown in front of us, shoulders sagged and spirits sank, writes…”

The response contains approximately 7% of comments that we would associate with this group. The reasoning types composition:

Logical Fallacies Composition

Melbourne is the most locked-down city in the world. People feel depressed and overgoverned.

You can feel the pain in these Hasty Generalization Examples:

The only people who know how it feels and how hard this is are Victorians (melburnians in particular) especially those of us that aren’t brainwashed by…

Jon Faine using the “it’s everyone else’s fault” just like Dan Andrew’s, these elitist have no idea what the average person thinks.

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