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Hackers Are So Fed Up with Twitter Bots They’re Hunting Them Down Themselves

theintercept.com

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Re: Hackers Are So Fed Up with Twitter Bots They’re Hunting Them Down Themselves

#151

Post by zaarn »

jeffwass wrote: post #53
downandout wrote: post #25

The profile of fake porn accounts the guy in the first part of the story developed is that they "liked more tweets than they retweeted, had fewer than 1,000 followers, and directed readers to click the link in their bios." If that is the only criteria he's using, many legitimate accounts will be falsely accused.

I’m a total Twitter n00b. But are we really supposed to retweet more than we like? I was treating retweets as a stronger version of ‘like’, in a sense. Assuming too much retweeting will clog my followers’ feeds, and make them more likely to mute or unfollow me. So yeah, I like far more than I retweet. I also have well less than 1000 followers, being a n00b. I DO have a link in my profile, but don’t actively request p…

On mastodon I use boosts (similar to retweet) when I want everyone who follows me to see a specific post. Like is when I find the specific toot interesting but not something I want to bother other people with.

Re: Hackers Are So Fed Up with Twitter Bots They’re Hunting Them Down Themselves

#152

Post by bad_user »

cookiecaper wrote: post #125
simplify wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like an RSS reader but for people & products. At least that's how I use it.

Most consumption-oriented social media is "like an RSS reader". HN is a news aggregator with a forum bolted onto the bottom of the stories. What is Facebook? It's an RSS feed of your friends and family's lives. Facebook has replaced Blogger et al, which primarily syndicated through actual RSS, because it was an accessible, simple way to a) create a feed and b) allow publishers to retain some control over their conten…

> HN is a news aggregator

I cannot filter HN's feed to only get content from the people I want to follow. And don't tell me about shitty apps.

Therefore it does not qualify as an RSS reader.

Re: Hackers Are So Fed Up with Twitter Bots They’re Hunting Them Down Themselves

#153

Post by zeth___ »

sincerely wrote: post #114
zeth___ wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question: what's the point of twitter?

at some level it's similar to instagram/snapchat stories where you can get brief updates from people you know in other cases entire subcultures that used to exist on forums have mainly moved to twitter, like the fighting game community or somethingawful-style humor then a lot of people like to use it to follow celebrities, musicians or industry leaders

Begging the question: what's the point of instagram and snapchat.

Explain this as though I'm a luddite who thinks command line email is better than bbs, irc, and everything else.

Re: Hackers Are So Fed Up with Twitter Bots They’re Hunting Them Down Themselves

#154

Post by tragic »

cookiecaper wrote: post #130
JonasJSchreiber wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I couldn't agree more. If there are more accounts than people in a region, you know you have robots registering. They need to employ better captcha and verification for registering new accounts. I wouldn't go as far as to require government ID, (some folks have issues getting government IDs for voting purposes) and many undeveloped nations have large portions of their populations that have no birth certificates. I wo…

Suppose someone has divergent interests. Maybe they are interested in computing and hunting. If they want to discuss things and cultivate a following in each of these communities, should they be required to tweet both from the same account? What if there isn't a lot demographic overlap? Twitter doesn't provide any kind of tooling that would allow one to follow only the relevant tweets in a given account. This is espe…

I don't think the scheme under discussion requires a one to one relationship between accounts and pieces of ID. Just that, to get the blue badge or whatever, any account should have an identified 'real person' (or company etc) behind it.

Re: Hackers Are So Fed Up with Twitter Bots They’re Hunting Them Down Themselves

#155

Post by mfjordvald »

stryk wrote: post #131
aaachilless wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it for some reason not a viable solution to just stop following people who shitpost? Or does Twitter push random users' posts at you? I ask because I've been circling around Twitter for a month or so, but if you can't isolate yourself from public tweets, I'm definitely not going to jump in.

If I may make a suggestion, and I'm not sure what your use-case plans are for it -- maybe this isn't feasible for you, but if you absolutely MUST use Twitter, do not install it on your phone. Keep it to just the desktop website version. My reasons for suggesting this are three-fold: 1) Twitter at it's core is, IMO, nothing but a distraction. You will be less productive and less interactive with real people in real li…

Thanks for the push. I never use Twitter on my phone anyway but I had the app installed for no use at all. Just got rid of it.

Re: Hackers Are So Fed Up with Twitter Bots They’re Hunting Them Down Themselves

#156

Post by rtpg »

zeth___ wrote: post #75
bigiain wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got fed up with Twitter's lack of enthusiasm in blocking all sorts of shitposts that I stopped using it. I've been significantly less angry ever since...

Honest question: what's the point of twitter?

for a lot of people its a low-effort blog. So I follow some friends who tweet a bit about their life and fun stuff.

Artists also use it as a low-effort gallery/WIP blog. Fun to look at stuff in that scenario as well.

Re: Hackers Are So Fed Up with Twitter Bots They’re Hunting Them Down Themselves

#157

Post by jshevek »

zeth___ wrote: post #153
sincerely wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

at some level it's similar to instagram/snapchat stories where you can get brief updates from people you know in other cases entire subcultures that used to exist on forums have mainly moved to twitter, like the fighting game community or somethingawful-style humor then a lot of people like to use it to follow celebrities, musicians or industry leaders

Begging the question: what's the point of instagram and snapchat. Explain this as though I'm a luddite who thinks command line email is better than bbs, irc, and everything else.

I don't see how that is "begging the question", which means "to assume the truth of the conclusion of an argument in the premises in order for the conclusion to follow."

Re: Hackers Are So Fed Up with Twitter Bots They’re Hunting Them Down Themselves

#158

Post by jshevek »

spdustin wrote: post #91
aphextron wrote: post #74

This whole problem could be solved by opening account verification up to everyone. Twitter would be amazing if every profile were guaranteed to be a verified human being with government issued ID. Leave it open to those who want to stay anonymous, but give users the option to filter those people out.

I upvoted because I assume you meant that verification would be optional . I believe Twitter is actually moving toward that solution. I'd be on board. Anonymous users would stay anonymous; users that are comfortable confirming their identity would get a blue badge. I don't see a downside, and I see plenty of upsides.

I don't see this working well as long as Twitter us also using the badge as a means of punishment

Re: Hackers Are So Fed Up with Twitter Bots They’re Hunting Them Down Themselves

#160

Post by auxbuss »

jshevek wrote: post #157
zeth___ wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Begging the question: what's the point of instagram and snapchat. Explain this as though I'm a luddite who thinks command line email is better than bbs, irc, and everything else.

I don't see how that is "begging the question", which means "to assume the truth of the conclusion of an argument in the premises in order for the conclusion to follow."

"begging the question" is also commonly used to mean: to raise a point for debate.
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