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Twitter suspended our Open Data project's account and wiped all our followers

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Re: Twitter suspended our Open Data project's account and wiped all our followers

#21

Post by twblalock »

modsec wrote: post #9
overcast wrote: post #3

I'm saying it again, don't build a business based on someone else's data. At any point it could disappear, along with you.

What's a good alternative you would suggest? I often have a similar problem and the fact is that most users hang out on platforms that suck like Twitter, Facebook, etc. If I build my business on a decentralized platform like blockchain etc. I immediately lose 90% or even more of my target audience. If I build my business on my own datacenter the cost and maintenance involved is staggeringly high. Do you have a reason…

Use cloud providers like AWS, Google Cloud, or Azure. Or pay to be colocated in a datacenter -- you don't need to build one. Back up your databases somewhere that only you control.

You'll have to hire some engineers to maintain this, but it won't be as bad as building a datacenter. And it's what you'll need to do to avoid being a sharecropper on someone else's platform.

Re: Twitter suspended our Open Data project's account and wiped all our followers

#22

Post by ManFromUranus »

fortythirteen wrote: post #11
Rjevski wrote: post #2

I love it how they have “automated systems that remove spam” that somehow remove innocent accounts like this one but completely fail to remove blatantly obvious spam. I don’t expect the system to be bulletproof and remove advanced spam rings, but when obvious spam is allowed to stay on the platform I’m wondering what the idiots at Twitter are really doing.

It all makes sense when you realize that they're lying and their "automated system" is a bunch of low level contractors.

"Automated system" is made of people!

Re: Twitter suspended our Open Data project's account and wiped all our followers

#23

Post by pound »

Rjevski wrote: post #13
pound wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

re: "idiots at Twitter" - It's always nice to encounter someone smart on internet.

I assume this is sarcasm, so I’d like to point out that I don’t consider myself smarter than anyone else or anything - I say idiots simply because there’s no excuse where blatantly obvious spam (for example the crypto currency scam replies in response to famous accounts like Elon Musk) isn’t deleted automatically.

If you know how to reliably solve that easy problem I'm pretty sure they're hiring

Re: Twitter suspended our Open Data project's account and wiped all our followers

#24

Post by ropeadopepope »

Rjevski wrote: post #2

I love it how they have “automated systems that remove spam” that somehow remove innocent accounts like this one but completely fail to remove blatantly obvious spam. I don’t expect the system to be bulletproof and remove advanced spam rings, but when obvious spam is allowed to stay on the platform I’m wondering what the idiots at Twitter are really doing.

> I’m wondering what the idiots at Twitter are really doing.

What if they're not idiots? What if that system is working exactly as intended?

Re: Twitter suspended our Open Data project's account and wiped all our followers

#26

Post by Rjevski »

modsec wrote: post #17
Rjevski wrote: post #2

I love it how they have “automated systems that remove spam” that somehow remove innocent accounts like this one but completely fail to remove blatantly obvious spam. I don’t expect the system to be bulletproof and remove advanced spam rings, but when obvious spam is allowed to stay on the platform I’m wondering what the idiots at Twitter are really doing.

> idiots at Twitter A constructive comment would have been to point us at good spam filters that are very good at not allowing obvious spam so that we do not make the same mistake that Twitter did and be labelled as "idiots" by the likes of you on the Internet.

Any of the open-source email spam filters? Not saying they’re excellent by any means but they’d at least take care of the most obvious spam there is. False positives can be dealt with appeals - allow people to actually appeal the decision and get a human to review it. I’d take the occasional false positive with a proper appeals system any day over the current cesspool that is Twitter.

Re: Twitter suspended our Open Data project's account and wiped all our followers

#27

Post by eli »

Rjevski wrote: post #19
fortythirteen wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It all makes sense when you realize that they're lying and their "automated system" is a bunch of low level contractors.

Most likely, but then I wonder, what do their 1k-5k (according to CrunchBase) employees really do? A simple spam flagging system (that’ll take care of the lowest hanging fruit aka very obvious spam) can be built even by a single engineer.

How would that be different from the existing spam flagging system?

Re: Twitter suspended our Open Data project's account and wiped all our followers

#28

Post by gaius »

fortythirteen wrote: post #11
Rjevski wrote: post #2

I love it how they have “automated systems that remove spam” that somehow remove innocent accounts like this one but completely fail to remove blatantly obvious spam. I don’t expect the system to be bulletproof and remove advanced spam rings, but when obvious spam is allowed to stay on the platform I’m wondering what the idiots at Twitter are really doing.

It all makes sense when you realize that they're lying and their "automated system" is a bunch of low level contractors.

Artificial artificial intelligence, if you will

Re: Twitter suspended our Open Data project's account and wiped all our followers

#29

Post by crankylinuxuser »

modsec wrote: post #17
Rjevski wrote: post #2

I love it how they have “automated systems that remove spam” that somehow remove innocent accounts like this one but completely fail to remove blatantly obvious spam. I don’t expect the system to be bulletproof and remove advanced spam rings, but when obvious spam is allowed to stay on the platform I’m wondering what the idiots at Twitter are really doing.

> idiots at Twitter A constructive comment would have been to point us at good spam filters that are very good at not allowing obvious spam so that we do not make the same mistake that Twitter did and be labelled as "idiots" by the likes of you on the Internet.

Or, you can spend human time to review a decision like "Delete account with known good history", rather than the current SV trend of 'automate it, fuck it, who cares? We'll wait until someone complains on HN or Reddit'

The first rule is you don't delete user data without consent. The second rule, is you dont delete user data without consent!

And yes, I work in the industry. Bad shit happens, and data can be lost. But trusting some automated 'spam detection algo' and making actionable, irrecoverable decisions on fuzzy math is completely idiotic, boneheaded, and fucking stupid! If you're in that product team, you deserve every shred of scorn you're getting.

Re: Twitter suspended our Open Data project's account and wiped all our followers

#30

Post by ManFromUranus »

ryandrake wrote: post #16

I can almost buy the need to have automated account suspensions, but shouldn’t the appeal at least be human reviewed? When your appeal logic is: if (true) { deny_appeal(); } ...it might give people the impression that there’s nobody behind the wheel. I guess this is what “building services that scale” means.

Twitters bot detection "algorithm" is:

For 1 to accounts do ban account()

A bot will not appeal the ban, while human will appeal!

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