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The fake Facebook profile industry

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Re: The fake Facebook profile industry

#151

Post by Feniks »

pohl wrote: post #44
dannyw wrote: post #3

I find it unbelievable that Facebook doesn't have the fake profile situation under control. Facebook builds an incredibly detailed social graph of every user (and non-user) with a big trail of activity, on and off Facebook. Surely there are signs; surely there are common characteristics, and if this journalist can write such a detailed exposé with only public data, Facebook can do much better.

Why would they scuttle their own engagement metrics by pruning out highly-engaged segments of the social network, though?

This.

Facebook will only remove the accounts that give them too much (media) trouble.

Re: The fake Facebook profile industry

#152

Post by fnl »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #69
abtom wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is something that could have happened to anyone. Not just because of misplaced trust in an online partner but because it's easy to create fake screenshots of conversations using Photoshop or simply Inspect Element. I'm interested in how you mitigated the damage once the post was published. A good strategy might have been to simply discredit it as being fake/photoshopped along with a small tutorial showing how ea…

It's shocking how easy it is to become a liar without missing a beat. If they slipped and someone caught them lying, it would become exponentially worse. Bad idea. But they should be proud of their sexuality. Whether it's BDSM or hotwifing or whatever strange kink, who cares? It's the same as shaming someone for being gay. I dislike that we have to be so Victorian about sex. It's the social climate we live in, but...…

> But in an era when the truth is so easy to distort, what should you believe?

What makes you think that in some time before it was easier to find the truth?

Re: The fake Facebook profile industry

#153

Post by metalliqaz »

tmpz22 wrote: post #131

Throwaway to share a valuable perspective. My dad is a chronic target for scammers, and falls for them at a rate where I can only think it intentional on some level. He'll allow fake MSPs to install programs as root, on the same machine he does banking and legal on. He'll call numbers when strange javascript alerts tell him he has a virus. He'll then pay people to "remove" said malware, giving them full access to the…

Where I work spear-phishing is a real concern, so they have instituted a training program where they send fake phishing emails every now and then. If you fall for it, you are directed to a training page. If you spot it and click the "report" button, you are greeted with a message congratulating you for being on the ball.

Perhaps some training is in order. You may not have the means to simulate a scam from his favorite "adult" website, but perhaps you could do something with a throwaway email account, or maybe simulate collateral damage from a successful scam.

And yes, you need to insulate your respective financial lives from that risk ASAP

Re: The fake Facebook profile industry

#154

Post by taurath »

JetSpiegel wrote: post #128
taurath wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because as it becomes more fake they lose their reason to have users in the first place. Ads are the product, metrics are the data that leads to the product, and users are the raw material. If they lose the raw material the product loses value.

> https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/FB/chart The data disagrees with your analysis.

I didn’t say they are losing users, just that they could.

Re: The fake Facebook profile industry

#155

Post by wepple »

MarkPNeyer wrote: post #125

All of the problems with fake profiles are fixable if we just use the social graph. It drives me nuts that this a problem. I have a solution, which i'll share here. I'm sharing it because i hope SOMEONE can build this or share it with someone at a high level at FB or twitter. I have a mortgage in silicon valley and a young child, so i'm not in a position to take the time and risk to do this. But i really desperately…

I don’t see this working. Too many people on Facebook accept friend requests from unknown people already for it to work. I guess you could have some kind of “have you actually met this person in real life” test, but that’s an annoying friction, and people seem to enjoy inflating “friends” regardless.

Re: The fake Facebook profile industry

#156

Post by CalChris »

Feniks wrote: post #151
pohl wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would they scuttle their own engagement metrics by pruning out highly-engaged segments of the social network, though?

This. Facebook will only remove the accounts that give them too much (media) trouble.

This too.

The burden is on us to disengage from Facebook rather than clutch our virtual pearls.

Re: The fake Facebook profile industry

#157

Post by glenstein »

dopamean wrote: post #105
addicted wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a completely different situation. Assuming that such a tape exists, the issue isn’t that Trump has sexual kinks. The issue is that the President is subject to blackmail from a foreign power. If such a tape existed for anyone else and was in the hands of a foreign government, that person would not be able to get the lowest level of security clearance in the US because the opportunity for blackmail places them a…

None of the people I'm talking about misunderstand what the real point is. What they took issue with was the snickering about the content of the video and the fact that someone's sexual fetishes would be used as blackmail in the first place. Everyone understands the gravity of the President being blackmailed.

Well that's better- it at least shows the problem isn't misunderstanding the significance so much as it's letting a peripheral issue occupy attention at the expense of the more important issue.

But that's a problem because it's exactly this kind of conversational shift that makes derailment a good tactic for mitigating the impact of political scandals.

Re: The fake Facebook profile industry

#158

Post by koolba »

fnl wrote: post #152
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's shocking how easy it is to become a liar without missing a beat. If they slipped and someone caught them lying, it would become exponentially worse. Bad idea. But they should be proud of their sexuality. Whether it's BDSM or hotwifing or whatever strange kink, who cares? It's the same as shaming someone for being gay. I dislike that we have to be so Victorian about sex. It's the social climate we live in, but...…

> But in an era when the truth is so easy to distort, what should you believe? What makes you think that in some time before it was easier to find the truth?

Prior to the internet and social media there was less noise, hence a higher signal to noise ratio.

Re: The fake Facebook profile industry

#159

Post by metalliqaz »

Feniks wrote: post #151
pohl wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would they scuttle their own engagement metrics by pruning out highly-engaged segments of the social network, though?

This. Facebook will only remove the accounts that give them too much (media) trouble.

Yeah, but surely they must understand (especially after their uncomfortable turn in front of a congressional committee) that if they keep up the bullshit for too long they are going to find themselves regulated.

There may be no immediate financial incentive, but I'll bet good money that they fear a future of regulatory compliance.

Edited for spelling.

Re: The fake Facebook profile industry

#160

Post by [deleted] »

have_faith wrote: post #9

Worth reading despite many from HN likely knowing this existed already. What I find interesting is that to me and I assumed a lot of people, fake profiles are very obvious and as such I assumed there were, relatively, easy techniques to deal with them. After working on some twitter marketing campaigns over the years and witnessing the swarming bot networks do their thing I have concluded that they are not dealt with…

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