Who would have guessed that the first large-scale achievement re: the Turing Test would have happened on Facebook. We are watching bots be confused with humans and vice versa on an enormous scale.
Facebook Says It’s Policing Fake Accounts, but They’re Still Easy to Spot
91–100 of 124 posts
Re: Facebook Says It’s Policing Fake Accounts, but They’re Still Easy to Spot
#92They won’t admit they have a fake account problem because it would admit they been selling ads to bots and ripping off their advertisers. Too bad it’s true.
I just boosted couple of posts on Facebook. Every single one of them had likes from Bangladeshi click farms. I am not even kidding. Each of the likes had western sounding name with about 30 friends all of who were posting in Bengali language.
I am not sure if Silicon Valley show got the idea from Facebook or otherway around.
Re: Facebook Says It’s Policing Fake Accounts, but They’re Still Easy to Spot
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes. And the way it's often argued, it treats the status quo as some sort of natural given, like the weather. The line of argument seems to be that if Facebook and Twitter can't run safe platforms while maintaining their current revenue models and profit margins, well, we'll just have to live with that lack of safety. I find this line of argument odd when it's about actual natural givens, like dangerous weather. I'm…
I find it ridiculous that text on random social media accounts is being associated with "safety". If anything, it's the user's own misuse and mishandling of their own information, and their lack of understanding that anybody can publish anything, that makes their specific use of social media "unsafe". The trust and total integration of Facebook into people's lives is the actual unsafe component, which Facebook themse…
This is not a very thoughtful response.
If Facebook and Twitter were no more useful or trustworthy than 4chan, then they wouldn't exist. It's like saying, "I can't believe people are trusting encyclopedias and cookbooks. There's no reason that readers should consider them any different than stuff written on a bathroom wall."
The problem is the gap between what they sell themselves as and what the actual user experience is. If Facebook were advertising themselves as the cloaca of the Internet, your vigorous user-blaming would have some merit. But they don't. They aim to be in daily use by every person in the world, a trusted intermediary. They either need to live up to that or quit.
Re: Facebook Says It’s Policing Fake Accounts, but They’re Still Easy to Spot
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
I find it ridiculous that text on random social media accounts is being associated with "safety". If anything, it's the user's own misuse and mishandling of their own information, and their lack of understanding that anybody can publish anything, that makes their specific use of social media "unsafe". The trust and total integration of Facebook into people's lives is the actual unsafe component, which Facebook themse…
This is not a very thoughtful response. If Facebook and Twitter were no more useful or trustworthy than 4chan, then they wouldn't exist. It's like saying, "I can't believe people are trusting encyclopedias and cookbooks. There's no reason that readers should consider them any different than stuff written on a bathroom wall." The problem is the gap between what they sell themselves as and what the actual user experien…
You can generally trust your connections to your acquaintances, and companies/personas you know from elsewhere.
It's all the external feeds wanting your attention & commenters throwing in their 2 bits that are the random noise. This is the domain where the propagandists are working, and where there is no and should be no trust. There's no difference between some nobody posting from their personal account, and some nobody posting from their account that they've slapped a logo on. There's no distinguishable difference between 100 nobodies throwing in their heartfelt opinion, and 100 bots repeating the opinion of 1 nobody.
Re: Facebook Says It’s Policing Fake Accounts, but They’re Still Easy to Spot
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
So you're falling into (3) and ignoring how important (1) is
Um, the person simply defined a problem into existence. There is no agreed upon basis of thinking like this.
Yes they did. So what do you find wrong with their first point or any others? And that might make your suggestion better?
Re: Facebook Says It’s Policing Fake Accounts, but They’re Still Easy to Spot
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes. And the way it's often argued, it treats the status quo as some sort of natural given, like the weather. The line of argument seems to be that if Facebook and Twitter can't run safe platforms while maintaining their current revenue models and profit margins, well, we'll just have to live with that lack of safety. I find this line of argument odd when it's about actual natural givens, like dangerous weather. I'm…
Yes, I've always found the 'YouTube gets too much video to moderate it' a particularly shit argument. Maybe they not be allowed to have as much content then.
So which videos (or people posting) would get the short stick with their content not going up on YouTube in this scenario? No way something like this can ever end well.
Re: Facebook Says It’s Policing Fake Accounts, but They’re Still Easy to Spot
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes. And the way it's often argued, it treats the status quo as some sort of natural given, like the weather. The line of argument seems to be that if Facebook and Twitter can't run safe platforms while maintaining their current revenue models and profit margins, well, we'll just have to live with that lack of safety. I find this line of argument odd when it's about actual natural givens, like dangerous weather. I'm…
I don't buy it. Facebook knows with absolute certainty if an account is legit or not. Cambridge Analytics, Lexis/Nexus (nee Seisent), ChoicePoint (oops, bought by Lexis/Nexus), Palantir, NSA, and others have all uniquely identitied every person, living or dead. Facebook has even more data. Facebook even has phantom profiles for people without accounts. Of course they know who's legit. They can't not know. Just like F…
But sometimes people create a second account or an account for some odd reason that isn't directly obviously them. But they'll properly use those accounts. Do you just ban these accounts too? Accounts not doing any harm and potentially being beneficial to certain things like FB group participation or posts.
Finally, if they act like real users since they are, it helps Facebook's bottom line. Booting them would hurt FB and piss off those people.
This is just one example of "fake accounts"
Re: Facebook Says It’s Policing Fake Accounts, but They’re Still Easy to Spot
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
They don't care anyway. A while back I got a notification that a sexually explicit picture had been removed from my page. I had never seen the picture in question, said so, and asked where it had been posted, as I was worried that my account had been compromised. They completely ignored the question and I got back a standard 'we've reviewed the picture and found it's not compliant with our community standards' reply.…
> Like many people, I'd really like to leave the platform but not the network of friends that I communicate regularly with. And no, email and or other channels are not good substitutes. Any alternative has to offer at least the same degree of functionality/convenience to be worth using. Not picking on you specifically, but I've noticed that this is the standard line used by people who love to complain about how shitt…
Your response is also a typical post around here. You're perfectly fine without social media or FB specifically. So why aren't other people who don't particularly like FB. It isn't always that simple.
I also don't mean to pick on you specifically. Just expanding the discussion.
Re: Facebook Says It’s Policing Fake Accounts, but They’re Still Easy to Spot
#99By "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".
That was one of the final straws for me. I don't think anyone should trust Facebook with enough information to completely take over someone's real life identity. FB feels authoritarian in a very Orwellian way, and it is even scarier that, much like Orwell wrote, nobody seems to care. We might not be burning books a la Bradbury, but we seem to be burning away our rights to privacy as a complicit society.
Do you feel the same way about other major institutions like Google and Amazon (they're still getting there)?
Re: Facebook Says It’s Policing Fake Accounts, but They’re Still Easy to Spot
#100Facebook's login page encourages you to set up a new account ('always free') despite their knowing you have an account. Makes me wonder how many sock puppets and variants there are out there. Regarding 'Russia' surely we should be saying 'Eastern European Gangsters?' rather than a nation state...
I wonder how much of the problem would be eliminated if Facebook accounts had a 1 time $5.00 set up fee? I'd definitely be willing to pay a 1 time fee for a 90%+ reduction in fake accounts.
But the vast majority of people wouldn't be happy about that at all. Even if most people ended up paying, the loss FB would take in trust and reputation from users would be catastrophic.
Even Whatsapp usually seen as a great startup in their growth and sustainability never charged more than a fraction of their user base the $1 fee.