The Democratic National Convention again surpassed its Republican counterpart in viewership numbers Tuesday night, with an average of more than 20 million Americans tuning in compared to the RNC’s 14 million on its second night—a nearly 39% difference.
The event even garnered roughly 500,000 more viewers than its first night—a historical anomaly, according to Nielsen data.
Typically, fewer viewers tune in to the conventions on the second night.
The 2024 convention is the first Democratic conference to have higher ratings on the second night in the last decade—most likely propelled by the primetime speeches given by former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama.
I watched the video of Obama’s speech on yt last night. Great speech, but what struck me most was how many obvious bot accounts were trying to spread negative messaging about Democrats in the comments.
Now yt comment sections aren’t exactly known for being a great place to discuss things but I’ve never seen that amount of blatant astroturfing all in one place. I scrolled through over a hundred of the top comments and 80% were from accounts with the “firstname-lastname-4digit#” type of username and little or no account activity aside from comments. This was 3 hours after the video was originally posted.
We really need to address bot activity on the internet because people are way too easily swayed by stuff like that. We’re making it almost trivial for bad actors to control the narrative in ways that are not good for society.