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Signs you're following a fake Twitter account

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Re: Signs you're following a fake Twitter account

#81

Post by bcoates »

biznickman wrote: post #40

I've been writing about this for years but it's insane to me that Twitter is not stopping this. They are contributing both to group psychosis and the destruction of democracy through the spread of disinformation.

The point of these bots isn't to spread disinformation or to amplify political content (the article is wrong about this).

The point of these bots is to build up an account with credible behavior that you can use to make money (usually by scamming advertisers into buying paid tweets/followers, or by directly promoting scam products).

Political twitter is so formulaic and high volume that bot/sweatshop posts don't seem out of place compared to the usual traffic from real accounts.

If there were no politics on twitter they'd just send formulaic messages about pop culture or sports or something.

Re: Signs you're following a fake Twitter account

#82

Post by dobleboble »

bcoates wrote: post #81
biznickman wrote: post #40

I've been writing about this for years but it's insane to me that Twitter is not stopping this. They are contributing both to group psychosis and the destruction of democracy through the spread of disinformation.

The point of these bots isn't to spread disinformation or to amplify political content (the article is wrong about this). The point of these bots is to build up an account with credible behavior that you can use to make money (usually by scamming advertisers into buying paid tweets/followers, or by directly promoting scam products). Political twitter is so formulaic and high volume that bot/sweatshop posts don't seem…

You make a bold claim, do you have any supporting evidence?

Re: Signs you're following a fake Twitter account

#83

Post by jimkleiber »

petargyurov wrote: post #9

The biggest sign mentioned in the article is the insane number of tweets since the inception of the account - surely this must set off some alerts on Twitter's backend? I know that this is an extremely difficult problem to solve and that they probably ban accounts in waves but with something as obvious as this you'd think that the ban could/should come more swiftly...

I think it could be a relatively easy problem to solve: give any user the option to verify their identity.

In this way, as verified accounts increase, the unverified accounts become more obvious and I imagine we will start to view them with more scrutiny.

It would allow anonymity to remain, just make it so those accounts are more obviously anonymous or pseudonymous.

Re: Signs you're following a fake Twitter account

#84

Post by anigbrowl »

xaxsacsdaffbnk wrote: post #76
anigbrowl wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Available evidence doesn't support your claims.

Such as??? Please point to the evidence, I am genuinely interested.

It's a big topic and I am reluctant to invest a great deal of time trying to persuade a new arrival. Try following the links in this article for an overview of recent research.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-twitter-bots-...

Re: Signs you're following a fake Twitter account

#85

Post by jimkleiber »

Seems like the only reason Twitter created verified users was because they got sued by Tony LaRussa for his account being impersonated.

What I'm wondering is when there will be a class-action lawsuit on behalf of all the everyday people who have had their accounts impersonated?

I hope it doesn't have to happen that way, I hope Twitter gives everyone the option to verify their profile, and yet I haven't seen much progress on this front since 2016 when I started looking at it.

Re: Signs you're following a fake Twitter account

#86

Post by harrier »

thefreeman wrote: post #46
harrier wrote: post #29

Systems like TPDNE can generate random fake people but can they generate multiple different images of the same fake person? If that is not the case then the existence of different photos should prove a person is real.

This was directly addressed in the article and no they cannot.

> TPDNE only creates a single image of a person

That doesn't state that it can't, only that it doesn't. Also, I am wondering about other GANs/image generation systems and not just TPDNE specifically.

Re: Signs you're following a fake Twitter account

#87

Post by [deleted] »

xaxsacsdaffbnk wrote: post #61
biznickman wrote: post #40

I've been writing about this for years but it's insane to me that Twitter is not stopping this. They are contributing both to group psychosis and the destruction of democracy through the spread of disinformation.

It's insane to demand somebody should be given the authority to determine what is disinformation and what is not. That is a totalitarian approach. Those few Twitter bots don't hurt anybody, because nobody listens to them anyway. And if people do listen to them, they will eventually catch on and their information immune system will have been strengthened.

[deleted]

Re: Signs you're following a fake Twitter account

#88

Post by lizzard »

xaxsacsdaffbnk wrote: post #61
biznickman wrote: post #40

I've been writing about this for years but it's insane to me that Twitter is not stopping this. They are contributing both to group psychosis and the destruction of democracy through the spread of disinformation.

It's insane to demand somebody should be given the authority to determine what is disinformation and what is not. That is a totalitarian approach. Those few Twitter bots don't hurt anybody, because nobody listens to them anyway. And if people do listen to them, they will eventually catch on and their information immune system will have been strengthened.

Do you believe the same thing about email spam detection? Various authorities decide on the validity of email and webspam.

Re: Signs you're following a fake Twitter account

#89

Post by luckylion »

dobleboble wrote: post #82
bcoates wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of these bots isn't to spread disinformation or to amplify political content (the article is wrong about this). The point of these bots is to build up an account with credible behavior that you can use to make money (usually by scamming advertisers into buying paid tweets/followers, or by directly promoting scam products). Political twitter is so formulaic and high volume that bot/sweatshop posts don't seem…

You make a bold claim, do you have any supporting evidence?

Wasn't this somewhat well documented during 2016 where most of it wasn't some coordinated attack from St. Petersburg but teens from south-eastern Europe making money from ads and therefore driving clickbait to its limit because they literally just wanted clicks?

Re: Signs you're following a fake Twitter account

#90

Post by rezeroed »

biznickman wrote: post #40

I've been writing about this for years but it's insane to me that Twitter is not stopping this. They are contributing both to group psychosis and the destruction of democracy through the spread of disinformation.

Because number of users is a nice pr metric. Just pretend the 15% which are bots are real, and pretend the 15% of suspended and abandoned accounts are active.
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