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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

#31

Post by Rjevski »

ropeadopepope wrote: post #24
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?

Whoever designed how this system is supposed to work (as in, allow the spam to remain) is still an idiot in my view. Granted, I’m sure they have an agenda to justify this (aka boost user numbers as much as possible, even if all of them are bots) but as a user I don’t care - I see spam on the platform and I call them out for it.

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

#32

Post by FRex »

pound wrote: post #8
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.

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

I once wanted to have a Twitter account without a phone number attached to it.

It got banned within 5 minutes of being created, I didn't use Tor, proxy or anything shady, a normal Chrome browser and a normal gmail account. All I did was Tweet once (their own localized hell world tweet where I didn't even fill in the text).

Reason was something that amounted to breaking their ToS via 'automated use' or some shit. Of course if I were to provide my mobile number it'd get instantly unlocked, 0 human oversight on that too.

Opening a support ticket sent me their automated crap email saying the same thing and asking for phone number again to instantly get my 10 minutes old account unlocked.

I never heard from a human.

They reap what they sow.

Edit: and by 'without a phone number' I mean I didn't fill it in when creating the account (I don't even remember if it asked there but I somehow got an account open without one), just out of principle of not wanting to give any more information than I need to any service I use. And of course I didn't divulge it after that borderline ransomware situation and my opinion of Twitter has dropped (generously speaking..). It was also my only ever attempt at having a Twitter account, not a secondary account or something like that. I also have a static Polish IP for years now, no other service ever 'caught' me for being a bot, it was in an up to date Chrome on Windows 10, etc.

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

#33

Post by gnicholas »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #14

So what's the current feeling on HN towards stories like this one? They seem fairly repetitive and uninteresting: users use something with no customer service, automated system goes haywire and bans/blocks/disables/inconveniences their account, the only way they have to get it resolved is to make some noise about it, they then return to using the service, nothing changes. At this point I'm tempted to flag stories lik…

I find this interesting because it helps me to better understand how to get support/results from one of the many popular systems that offer very little.

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

#34

Post by modsec »

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.

I see comments like this coming up on Hacker News almost every month and I tend to think that people who make these comments are either too young and/or have not worked for a mid-sized to a large company.

If you have worked in any company that deals with internet-facing traffic serving the size of audience that Twitter does, it should be obvious that 1k employees is nothing if you want to have all the necessary teams you need to keep the business running, for example, software engineering, software support, hardware engineering, hardware support, network engineering, software engineering, HR, finance, legal, PR, management, IT department, etc.

A company of this scale is not just code and raw technical skills. There are many nuances that you need to appreciate before you understand why it involves 1k-5k employees.

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

#35

Post by Rjevski »

eli wrote: post #27
Rjevski wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Well the existing system doesn’t seem to be working right. Blatantly obvious spam is allowed to remain, just see the spam replies to any big account’s tweets or spam on certain popular hashtags.

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

#36

Post by extralego »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #14

So what's the current feeling on HN towards stories like this one? They seem fairly repetitive and uninteresting: users use something with no customer service, automated system goes haywire and bans/blocks/disables/inconveniences their account, the only way they have to get it resolved is to make some noise about it, they then return to using the service, nothing changes. At this point I'm tempted to flag stories lik…

I don’t understand the reason for flagging it. I get the impression that you are flagging it for not being novel or unique. I can relate, but that is concerning in itself.

The general concern here could not be anymore relevant, and discounting that merely because it lacks novelty seems at least decadent and at most snobery.

Without even taking a stance on the issue being discussed, I think we can all agree that these sorts of issues that come up in our society and seem to affect all of us are in our noblest interests to take concern with.

I say we let these articles live.

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

#37

Post by yosito »

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.

Focusing on profit.

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

#39

Post by Rjevski »

yosito wrote: post #37
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. Focusing on profit.

Profit? Which profit?

Not to mention, having spam on the platform isn’t really a good strategy for profit anyway.

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

#40

Post by modsec »

Rjevski wrote: post #26
modsec wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Like what? SpamAssassin? You would be surprised how much obvious spam gets through it in the face of the kind of spam onslaught that goes on in the real world today.

Seriously, this problem is not as easy to solve for machines as you think it is.

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