For everything people dislike about curation, you avoid these syble attacks
Massive networks of fake accounts found on Twitter
151–160 of 267 posts
Re: Massive networks of fake accounts found on Twitter
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
Does anyone know if any of the social media sites have release info on their relative bot counts? I'm curious because I've seen the same posts in different places and now see a ton of comments boiling down to "Source?" again. The later used to be everywhere 8-9 years ago, but were typically people that actually wanted a source to read not just spam the question. Now it seems they are spamming it to distract from the…
No, because they report on growth of active users, which include bots. Their stock price would be reduced if they disclosed bot account numbers.
They also profit on bots through their ad networks.
Re: Massive networks of fake accounts found on Twitter
#153I 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.
What sort of ethical framework permits this?
Re: Massive networks of fake accounts found on Twitter
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
Semi-related aside, but fun: Every April Fool's Day I love to mess with family members. A (hypothetically) good effort:effect ratio I have found is Craigslist: Go into some large city's section (NYC, Austin, Sf, etc) and put up a listing for a 'free xbone' or a 'free PSS1', or something similarly typo'd. Explain that you are giving your kids' Xbone away because of a failing grade, you are moving overseas, your boyfri…
I understand it's all good-natured fun for you, but I'm glad I'm not in your family. You're making the world a worse place and wasting strangers' time.
Chill, its only on April Fool's day, as I said.
Re: Massive networks of fake accounts found on Twitter
#155I 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…
I wonder if others share my interest in what legitimate businesses are doing.
For example, Hootsuite Amplify is a platform designed to dominate social media by making it easy for your company's employee base to share and promote curated content.
This has a similar effect to botnets, except it's not violating t&c.
We're entering a world where authentic conversation is harder and harder to find. Historically personal content such as emails and tweets are now carefully constructed and managed, but still presented as personal content.
Re: Massive networks of fake accounts found on Twitter
#156Spam was a serious and growing problem before the major providers got serious about filtering. For now I just report clickbait feeds as spam and hope for the best.
I thought, "ha, he'd need a botnet to make any noticeable impact", when I thought, has anyone thought of that? Using a network of bots to detect and report obvious bot accounts.
In the same spirit, there is at least one botnet dubbed Linux/Moose [1] dedicated to penetrating home routers for the sole purpose of creating fake followers on social networks.
[1] http://www.welivesecurity.com/2016/11/02/linuxmoose-still-br...
Re: Massive networks of fake accounts found on Twitter
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
I already have most of work-related messaging on Facebook, and it's awesome indeed. Can't wait to drop Skype completely.
You have your work messaging on your personal Facebook? What happens if you change jobs or your relatives start fights with customers?
They could possibly be using https://workplace.fb.com
Re: Massive networks of fake accounts found on Twitter
#158I remember hearing about this radio host who was competing with another host to get more followers. Then over about a week one of his fans who owned a bot net gave him 100k followers. He sent a DM saying "you're welcome, enjoy".
He already had about 250k followers so it wasn't a huge spike in that context but it was interesting to think of the implications of that when you come across a random account with 100k followers and 100 following... they might not be as influential as it seems.
Also this was about a year ago and last I checked his follower account was roughly the same.
Wasn't there a story on HN about a guy who created a fake identity and twitter account with 20k followers and got invited (and paid?) to speak at a tech conference?
Re: Massive networks of fake accounts found on Twitter
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder what proportion of the chattering class will pay attention to measures of retweet:follower ratios. It's a good proxy for a fake account.
Go over to google and put in the words "buy retweets". That's really not a problem. They have full control over the accounts (via either fake signups themselves or script kiddie iStealer means), so anything like that in demand enough is probably something you can buy. A look at the history or content of mentions is probably the best bet to detect a faked account. Still, a clever person might slip by a cursory check.
Hell there are even Chrome plugins for free that'll get you followers, retweets and likes all automatically. Twitter is a joke. Anyone that takes their user count and interactions seriously on that platform is in for a bad time.
Re: Massive networks of fake accounts found on Twitter
#160Earlier 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.
Use fiver. You can buy followers on Twitter, IG, FB, G+ (is it still around?) and other networks