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Massive networks of fake accounts found on Twitter

bbc.com

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Re: Massive networks of fake accounts found on Twitter

#61

Post by Shivetya »

OliverJones wrote: post #20

Huh. The landline telephone business has, for a long time now, been compromised by spammers and bots (telemarketing calls and robocalls). I canceled my land line about four years ago after going for three months without receiving a single call I wanted. It seems the commercial social networks are headed for the same fate. And, they're headed for hardnosed and unpleasant regulation by governments. They probably need t…

they now spam cell phones as well with little to no fear of being stopped. worse is that many phone companies have no real desire to crack down on just offering up lines to these companies. if both provider and user were punished it could be handled

Re: Massive networks of fake accounts found on Twitter

#62

Post by wmorein »

danso wrote: post #2

This seems like a pretty straightforward thing to identify. I remember when the NYT's story, "The Agency", was published [0], some of the fake accounts it had mentioned were still up. Even though the accounts in that story were actually populated by real people, the sockpuppetry was pretty easy to identify. One: the accounts' past tweets right up until they started spreading the news about the fake U.S. disaster were…

I've seen a lot of cases of people's accounts being cloned and then being used to re-friend their friends. I've always wondered a bit about what they are going to be used for and I suspect this is one of the potential options.

Re: Massive networks of fake accounts found on Twitter

#63

Post by throwaway91111 »

dhimes wrote: post #51
ashark wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My cell phone's the same way now. Maybe one in ten calls, at best, isn't phone-spam. And that's with being on the Do Not Call list. I've been trying to figure out a way to do without an actual phone (except maybe a burner on the off chance I need to call 911) as a result. Text is by far the more valuable side of my phone plan, but mostly because everyone wants to use it for auth these days (I could switch to another…

In the US isn't there a law expressly prohibiting these calls to cell phones?

Yes, but a number of difficulties remain:

1) there's little way of figureing out who is actually contacting you.

2) If you file the number with the FCC you don't get a response.

3) it's not always obvious there's a commercial entity on the other side. I've gotten a number of calls that appear to try and keep me on the line while preventing from Turing test esque conversation from taking place.

4) some of the spam is legal--technically they aren't for profit, but they serve as a funnel for commercial services. These have been the most persistent with me.

Re: Massive networks of fake accounts found on Twitter

#64

Post by Spoom »

andai wrote: post #53
problems wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone with $10 can go buy tens of thousands of followers. And they work. And stay for a fair while. I've done this a few times myself, it really doesn't take any more than a quick google search.

Would you mind sharing why you did it? I've been curious about this for a while.

One thing I can think of is getting support from the "social media" arm of companies; if they believe you're an "influencer", you're likely to get white glove treatment (and may otherwise be ignored).

Re: Massive networks of fake accounts found on Twitter

#65

Post by apocalyptic0n3 »

andai wrote: post #53
problems wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone with $10 can go buy tens of thousands of followers. And they work. And stay for a fair while. I've done this a few times myself, it really doesn't take any more than a quick google search.

Would you mind sharing why you did it? I've been curious about this for a while.

Not the OP, but I previously worked for a company that did this. We had tens of thousands of fake accounts on both Twitter and Facebook and had a script that would have them all (or specific sets) follow the same account at random points over the course of a few days (to avoid giving the client a few thousand followers instantly, which might draw attention). I can't remember full details since I wasn't involved, but I think we were charging $10 per 1,000 followers per network.

The customers were generally people trying to get their small business out there or some local thinking it could make them into an internet celebrity (I work in/around Scottsdale, AZ and there are a lot of people here that think like that).

We had a separate script that would check to make sure each account was still active once a day and if accounts were removed, they would be replenished automatically, although once a client lost a follower, it was gone and a new one didn't replace it for them.

It was all kinda shady and it was one of the numerous reasons I left that web agency (which went bankrupt a year later and is no more), but it apparently produced decent results since search ranking increased both on Twitter/Facebook and on Google. I'm unsure if it is still as effective, though; this was almost 4 years ago that I left.

Only time I've seen it first hand since was with a client trying to get famous. They made some YouTube videos and bought tens of thousands of YouTube subscribers from somewhere (we don't offer that at my current agency)

Re: Massive networks of fake accounts found on Twitter

#66

Post by avip »

jashkenas wrote: post #28

I would imagine that it's possible that some of the people reading these comments might already know a lot more detail about Twitter/Facebook bots than this story goes into. Although you fine folks might remember me from a few other projects, I'm currently a Graphics Editor at The New York Times. We're actively curious and interested in pursuing lines of inquiry about this sort of behavior, and if any HN'ers have any…

Just approach the providers - they have nothing to hide, they are not involved in any illegal activity, and they'll be very happy to have their name dropped in NYT.

"Buy social media followers" is a straightforward business.

Re: Massive networks of fake accounts found on Twitter

#67

Post by warcher »

ashark wrote: post #40
OliverJones wrote: post #20

Huh. The landline telephone business has, for a long time now, been compromised by spammers and bots (telemarketing calls and robocalls). I canceled my land line about four years ago after going for three months without receiving a single call I wanted. It seems the commercial social networks are headed for the same fate. And, they're headed for hardnosed and unpleasant regulation by governments. They probably need t…

My cell phone's the same way now. Maybe one in ten calls, at best, isn't phone-spam. And that's with being on the Do Not Call list. I've been trying to figure out a way to do without an actual phone (except maybe a burner on the off chance I need to call 911) as a result. Text is by far the more valuable side of my phone plan, but mostly because everyone wants to use it for auth these days (I could switch to another…

Protip: I moved my legacy phone number (the number you get for customer service calls, that I hand out publicly, etc) over to google voice years ago. It follows me from phone to phone as I move carriers, everybody can reach me, and their "Press one to connect to the phone" feature throws off robodialers very effectively.

The only downside is that google voice smells like the kind of service that google doesn't regard as a needle mover and it's probably a question of when it gets axed, not if.

Re: Massive networks of fake accounts found on Twitter

#68

Post by brilliantcode »

apocalyptic0n3 wrote: post #65
andai wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you mind sharing why you did it? I've been curious about this for a while.

Not the OP, but I previously worked for a company that did this. We had tens of thousands of fake accounts on both Twitter and Facebook and had a script that would have them all (or specific sets) follow the same account at random points over the course of a few days (to avoid giving the client a few thousand followers instantly, which might draw attention). I can't remember full details since I wasn't involved, but…

what was the result? did it work out?

Re: Massive networks of fake accounts found on Twitter

#69

Post by brilliantcode »

puranjay wrote: post #49
OliverJones wrote: post #20

Huh. The landline telephone business has, for a long time now, been compromised by spammers and bots (telemarketing calls and robocalls). I canceled my land line about four years ago after going for three months without receiving a single call I wanted. It seems the commercial social networks are headed for the same fate. And, they're headed for hardnosed and unpleasant regulation by governments. They probably need t…

Twitter is extremely forgiving with its account creation. An internet marketing buddy showed me how he could make 20+ accounts on the same IP address without Twitter throwing the ban hammer.

they probably want it so it looks good around their quarterly reports.

Re: Massive networks of fake accounts found on Twitter

#70

Post by nostrademons »

No kidding.

I remember when I first moved to the Bay Area in 2009, I met a smart guy at a startup meetup, a serial entrepreneur with a previous exit. I asked him what he was working on, and he said "Oh, I've been writing a Twitter bot that will follow people of your choosing, engage them in simple conversation, and retweet their tweets. It's building a network of followers - I don't know yet what I'd do with that, but it's an asset that's likely valuable to somebody." I ran into him again a few weeks later, and he'd sold the company.

I think I'd heard from either him or someone here on Hacker News, around that time, that 75% of Twitter traffic was bots and automated accounts. Note that that was early 2009, before Twitter went mainstream and when they still had a really easy-to-use developer API.

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