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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

#181

Post by Inconel »

fsttx wrote: post #172
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…

There's an angle that hasn't been explored that ought to be: a lot of news and political commentary websites used to run their own comment systems for articles or use pseudonymous services like Disqus, but these were overrun by "trolls" and spammers. Many then switched to Facebook, presumably hoping that the "Real Name" policy would improve things. The interesting thing is that clicking on many of the Facebook profil…

I don't doubt that many of the commenters praising Trump, or any other politician for that matter, may in fact be sockpuppet accounts, but I wonder if this might be a similar situation to what we saw with polling prior to the election in which Trump voters were less willing to admit to voting for him. I'm not actually sure if this was the case but I've heard it theorized that this is one of the reasons polling might have been so off.

Perhaps there are commenters unwilling to link their real FB identity to supporting Trump? On the other hand, I see plenty of people make outrageous statements online clearly linked to their real FB profile so maybe this isn't a widespread concern.

Re: Massive networks of fake accounts found on Twitter

#182

Post by OliverJones »

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. It's a federal criminal law. That means you have to get federal attorneys' offices interested if you want the miscreants stopped. But shutting down telemarketers isn't nearly as much fun as driving people like Aaron Swartz to suicide, or as profitable as seizing airplanes from drug smugglers.

So, effectively, this kind of thing is legal.

Re: Massive networks of fake accounts found on Twitter

#183

Post by CPLX »

abandonliberty wrote: post #155
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…

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 c…

> We're entering a world where authentic conversation is harder and harder to find.

I guess. When I was a youth you found authentic conversation by being in the world and meeting an authentic person and having a conversation. If we keep that definition constant then it's precisely as hard to find today as it has always been.

Re: Massive networks of fake accounts found on Twitter

#184

Post by userbinator »

problems wrote: post #45
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…

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.

This reminds me of when I first heard of people buying "traffic" or "visitors" to their site --- being the type to not see the Internet in any commercial sense, the idea of paying to increase the bandwidth to your site (back in those days, bandwidth was not exactly cheap) was a bit puzzling... and then after seeing that many sites had ads and analytics, it all suddenly made sense.

Re: Massive networks of fake accounts found on Twitter

#185

Post by userbinator »

_pecl wrote: post #72
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…

I personally have thousands of Twitter accounts I control just for fun; I mostly use them for pranks, though in aggregate there are a few million followers between them (not sure how many duplicates there are, or, ironically, how many of their followers are bots). You can even buy software to create and manage Twitter accounts pretty easily in blackhat forums. For mine, I scraped a bunch of Instagram pictures for pho…

Fake People As A Service apparently exists now, making it even easier to "create your army": https://fakena.me/

(As Seen On HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8336036 )

Re: Massive networks of fake accounts found on Twitter

#186

Post by chinathrow »

tomc1985 wrote: post #169
chinathrow wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are one of the reasons why we don't have nice things. Read the ToS and respect them, please. Thank you.

Unbelievable -- "Hacker News" my ass HN needs more of this type of comments, not less

Not sure, are you being sarcastic?

Re: Massive networks of fake accounts found on Twitter

#187

Post by fsttx »

Inconel wrote: post #181
fsttx wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's an angle that hasn't been explored that ought to be: a lot of news and political commentary websites used to run their own comment systems for articles or use pseudonymous services like Disqus, but these were overrun by "trolls" and spammers. Many then switched to Facebook, presumably hoping that the "Real Name" policy would improve things. The interesting thing is that clicking on many of the Facebook profil…

I don't doubt that many of the commenters praising Trump, or any other politician for that matter, may in fact be sockpuppet accounts, but I wonder if this might be a similar situation to what we saw with polling prior to the election in which Trump voters were less willing to admit to voting for him. I'm not actually sure if this was the case but I've heard it theorized that this is one of the reasons polling might…

I mentioned that this happened on Conservative sites, and it was during the Primaries. It seems unlikely that, under those circumstances, people would be so shy about expressing their preferences.

Also these are not just stand-alone fake accounts with no friends created for making comments....these are curated to have enough details that make them look plausible to an unsophisticated automated detector (or overworked FB abuse department employee), but they have few friends, all with similar sorts of profiles, and no signs of activity except for posting comments.

I do agree that there was an element of "shyness" and self-censorship, but I expect it was from supporters of other candidates, who would not want their Real Names and identities to get embroiled in fights with fake profiles.

Re: Massive networks of fake accounts found on Twitter

#188

Post by frankmoodie »

chinathrow wrote: post #119
_pecl wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally have thousands of Twitter accounts I control just for fun; I mostly use them for pranks, though in aggregate there are a few million followers between them (not sure how many duplicates there are, or, ironically, how many of their followers are bots). You can even buy software to create and manage Twitter accounts pretty easily in blackhat forums. For mine, I scraped a bunch of Instagram pictures for pho…

You are one of the reasons why we don't have nice things. Read the ToS and respect them, please. Thank you.

No argument here, no contribution, just an insult. That's probably why you are being downvoted.

Re: Massive networks of fake accounts found on Twitter

#189

Post by frankmoodie »

tomc1985 wrote: post #169
chinathrow wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are one of the reasons why we don't have nice things. Read the ToS and respect them, please. Thank you.

Unbelievable -- "Hacker News" my ass HN needs more of this type of comments, not less

That's also not an argument

Re: Massive networks of fake accounts found on Twitter

#190

Post by LightskinKanye »

KirinDave wrote: post #141

I'm just amazed at this entire series of threads. "Gosh, who knew violating social network ToS by proxy and creating massive false consensus networks was so easy?" Everyone. Everyone should know. We're watching this terrible trend rip apart the entire social proposition of the internet after spending 2 decades trying and finally achieving buy in. And here y'all are, hopefulls for a digital economy cheerfully defraudi…

The Tragedy of the Commons states that I am free to exploit this flaw. But we as a society should probably do something about it
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