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Facebook Says It’s Policing Fake Accounts, but They’re Still Easy to Spot

nytimes.com

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Re: Facebook Says It’s Policing Fake Accounts, but They’re Still Easy to Spot

#41

Post by nerfhammer »

jmcqk6 wrote: post #28
menacingly wrote: post #5

I get that facebook my have complicated motives here, but I don't know that "easy to spot" is a good yardstick. First, there are the countless instances where something is trivial for a single person to suss out that doesn't scale. Second, and perhaps most importantly, I don't think simple hunches about fake accounts are really actionable here. Having an account that "originated in the Middle East" that now presents…

>First, there are the countless instances where something is trivial for a single person to suss out that doesn't scale. This is an interesting argument to me. It's basically conceding a shittier solution, because we "can't scale" the effective one. As we talk more and more about automation, I think this is similar to what we've seen in meat space with things like tools. I've heard so many people complain about chine…

1) ANY single prominent example of a false positive or false negative will enrage some community. People's brains can only think of examples, not rates.

2) With billions of accounts zero examples of error is an absurdity.

3) different communities drastically disagree on which things false positives and false negatives should be defined as.

4) More perceived effort to work on (1) increases the outrage, i.e. the perceived sense of moral betrayal from (1) and (3), despite (2).

5) human editors won't solve (1) + (2), and definitely not (3), and contribute to some degree to (4).

Re: Facebook Says It’s Policing Fake Accounts, but They’re Still Easy to Spot

#42

Post by rosser »

Stranger43 wrote: post #40
rosser wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...you have a fairly high chance of chance of you accidentally targeting a few thousand genuine users. Which is why I said "further scrutiny", and not robo-ban. The tone of these posts is very much, and very consistently the whole "sow dissension" and "poke at wedge issues" shtick that is demonstrably part of how the Russians have been meddling in our shit — and which Facebook, perhaps knowingly, profited from. (Un…

The college student problem is btw a very real concern in social science i.e. way to many studies have been made using local college students as study subjects, which is useless in a world where the average person speaks bad English and think the US is the biggest threat to world peace(however wrong that view might be). I.E. you cannot and should not build your algorithm about what is normal for your local but have t…

I'm talking about literally dozens of verbatim-identical posts on known-divisive issues, from different accounts in different cities — or even countries, though many-to-most of them are already in the US, mitigating so much of your counter-argument — and specifically not the viewpoint they're espousing (except insofar as that viewpoint tends, "with a probability approaching unity", to be driving an extant sociocultural or political wedge further in). This is about form, not content. You really need to understand that or we're talking past one another, and this conversation is moot.

For another example of what I'm talking about, I saw a video a couple of holiday shopping seasons ago, that showed clips from local newscast after local newscast, from dozens of TV stations across the country, all prattling on — verbatim — about how you should "buy yourself a gift this Christmas!" It's a manipulation, that no-one not seeing the broadcasts from multiple markets will ever notice, because they never see another market's telecast.

Obviously, if Facebook can aggregate these posts well enough to present them on a single "trending story" feed, they can damned well perform the step further analysis to check whether they're dropping verbatim posts, and whether there's anything else hinky about the accounts submitting those identical posts. These accounts, if they're fake, are being used to sow disinformation and dissension. They are not dialogue or diplomacy, let alone "direct people to people interaction".

Facebook's "right" to grow in non-US markets is completely orthogonal to that, and also — IMO — way less important than, you know, "a functioning democracy."

EDIT: phrasing.

Re: Facebook Says It’s Policing Fake Accounts, but They’re Still Easy to Spot

#43

Post by Mc_Big_G »

Fuck Facebook. Delete your account. A corporation's singular goal is to maximize profits, by definition. That's exactly what they've done by taking Russian money and using it to influence our elections. If you want justice, it's simple. Delete your account and don't use any Facebook services. Then we need laws regarding political "ads" and the internet, in addition to a lot of other changes our system obviously needs. Facebook will fight change as long as it affect their bottom line.

Re: Facebook Says It’s Policing Fake Accounts, but They’re Still Easy to Spot

#44

Post by why42 »

I can't believe this hasn't been brought up... but there is a massive conflict of interest here. And not due to the slimy but mostly above board reasons posted in the article.

It is deep rooted in the financial industry.

Misleading investors is not punished if you have a big business. Especially in tech.

Facebook stands to lose or gain billions of dollars on market capitalization based on how many people investors perceive to be on Facebook.

If Facebook is over-reporting users by any size multiple, they stand to get billions in additional valuation. The people using fake accounts don't want to get caught, as they make money from them.

Given the above, how can anyone realistically expect Facebook to really commit to cleaning up fake accounts? This isn't just for Facebook.

Big business has proven to be beyond prosecution unless they engage in the most outrageous behavior.

Re: Facebook Says It’s Policing Fake Accounts, but They’re Still Easy to Spot

#45

Post by dhimes »

azemetre wrote: post #25
dhimes wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it seems like an existential risk to them Maybe the problem is that they don't think this is true. How will it put them out of business? Lawsuits? Government forcing them to pull the plug? People not using the platform because fake stuff is there? I'm not convinced that the end result of any one of these paths will be strong enough to wreck their businesses.

If people realize that not many users are actively using these platforms it would decrease the value of ad buys. I mean if 20% of all Twitter users are bots that would be detrimental to the sales department. If Twitter knew how many users are bots and did nothing it might be considered a form of fraud and deceiving investors. Why should I buy ads on a platform that are overpriced if the ads will not be seen by legiti…

I think legitimate users will see them, but so will bots or fake users. I think there is a lot of click fraud, and has been since the early days of ppc. But we're still here.

Now, I can't really answer your question, which was "Why" should you still buy ads on the platforms? I for one don't. But many, many people do. Just like they buy ads on TV knowing a lot of people are going to ffw through them.

Re: Facebook Says It’s Policing Fake Accounts, but They’re Still Easy to Spot

#46

Post by leggomylibro »

why42 wrote: post #44

I can't believe this hasn't been brought up... but there is a massive conflict of interest here. And not due to the slimy but mostly above board reasons posted in the article. It is deep rooted in the financial industry. Misleading investors is not punished if you have a big business. Especially in tech. Facebook stands to lose or gain billions of dollars on market capitalization based on how many people investors pe…

Exactly, they have zero incentive to remove fake accounts, and several incentives to keep them. This is all just a show on their part.

But I doubt that only 10% of facebook accounts are real.

Re: Facebook Says It’s Policing Fake Accounts, but They’re Still Easy to Spot

#47

Post by cddotdotslash »

jokoon wrote: post #19

By "policing fake accounts" they also mean "hunt down real accounts who don't use their real name, and ask for a scan of your ID".

I understand the distinction, but how do we expect them to do both? If they can't enforce a real-name policy (by backing it up with required ID) then how can they possibly remove fake accounts which often use fake names?

Re: Facebook Says It’s Policing Fake Accounts, but They’re Still Easy to Spot

#48

Post by menacingly »

rjtavares wrote: post #31
jmcqk6 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>First, there are the countless instances where something is trivial for a single person to suss out that doesn't scale. This is an interesting argument to me. It's basically conceding a shittier solution, because we "can't scale" the effective one. As we talk more and more about automation, I think this is similar to what we've seen in meat space with things like tools. I've heard so many people complain about chine…

The way developed countries handle that is through regulation (specifically, fines). That changes the cost equation. Eg. Germany passed a law that fines Facebook if they don't comply with German hate speech laws.

It sounds as if these developed countries might be quick to throw out the baby with the bathwater

Re: Facebook Says It’s Policing Fake Accounts, but They’re Still Easy to Spot

#49

Post by devonkim »

One thing I learned from my experience in security is that sometimes instantly responding to a threat may be counterproductive because you may be reacting to a form of a honeypot - it is used to determine whether their newest iteration would bypass your detection or not. Similarly, large online game operators tend to do bans for bot systems in waves rather than incrementally to avoid signalling precisely what tipped off their systems.

I don’t know if the dynamics make sense for Facebook’s adversarial users or not.

Re: Facebook Says It’s Policing Fake Accounts, but They’re Still Easy to Spot

#50

Post by ksk »

nerfhammer wrote: post #41
jmcqk6 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>First, there are the countless instances where something is trivial for a single person to suss out that doesn't scale. This is an interesting argument to me. It's basically conceding a shittier solution, because we "can't scale" the effective one. As we talk more and more about automation, I think this is similar to what we've seen in meat space with things like tools. I've heard so many people complain about chine…

1) ANY single prominent example of a false positive or false negative will enrage some community. People's brains can only think of examples, not rates. 2) With billions of accounts zero examples of error is an absurdity. 3) different communities drastically disagree on which things false positives and false negatives should be defined as. 4) More perceived effort to work on (1) increases the outrage, i.e. the percei…

I would think its worth trying out something even if the result is less than perfect.
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