Signs you're following a fake Twitter account • Hacker News Board

Re: Signs you're following a fake Twitter account

#141

Post by mehrdadn » Fri, Mar 13, 2020, 12:09 AM UTC

mikedilger wrote: post #127

The bot panic is IMHO overblown. This comment is however NOT a defense of bots. I think bot detection and deletion of bot accounts would be a good thing. But the concern seems out of proportion. Society is full of disingenuous message amplification systems: a large subset of advertising (TV, magazine, billboards, direct marketing, etc), biased news media, spam, and now twitter bots. Twitter bots are a bit worse than…

The difference I see between Twitter bots and the other classical examples you mentioned is that anyone and their grandmother can make a destructive Twitter bot on a given day, with comparably little effort, negligible expenses, high anonymity, and hardly any traceability. Which I mean is basically the foundation of Twitter: it's based on the premise that everyone's speech should have worldwide reach with absolutely minimal effort. Whether the larger picture is a good thing or a bad thing, it does mean the bot problem is very much a novel problem and you can't just pretend is similar to the classical ones and deal with it the same way.

Re: Signs you're following a fake Twitter account

#142

Post by scholia » Fri, Mar 13, 2020, 12:21 AM UTC

fwip wrote: post #105

jimkleiber wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What do you think the marginal cost of verification is, and how many users will Twitter have to verify in order to make this work?

The marginal cost of verification could be zero. All Twitter has to do is to get together with Facebook, Google et al and agree to support a number of approved independent identity systems such as Yoti [1]. That uses a combination of government documents (eg passports) and biometrics.

Basically, users would be able to sign up for a sort of "digital passport" ID that would, in the long term, be accepted by governments and most websites. Enough people might find it convenient enough to sign up.

Twitter already allows you to block all users who have not registered a phone number and not uploaded a photo or whatever. I used these settings. They actually do remove a lot of bots and bad players. Again, in the long term, Twitter would give people the option to see only verified accounts.

I really wouldn't care if it meant I only saw tweets from a relatively small number of verified accounts. It might be more like Twitter in its first half dozen years, when it was much more engaging and fun than it is today.

[1] https://www.yoti.com/

Yoti also works offline. For example, you can use it to prove that you are over 18 without giving away your name or other irrelevant information.

Re: Signs you're following a fake Twitter account

#143

Post by Waterluvian » Fri, Mar 13, 2020, 12:54 AM UTC

Today I had someone reply to a comment of mine saying that I'm a bot and to report me.

Am I not in on a joke? Or am I doing something bot like? Or do people use this to exploit mindless masses to abuse the reporting system?

Re: Signs you're following a fake Twitter account

#144

Post by casefields » Fri, Mar 13, 2020, 12:59 AM UTC

brokensegue wrote: post #107

jimkleiber wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Verify how

You should try signing up on Nextdoor. This isn't a hard problem, nor would anyone be forced to verify themselves if they don't want to.

Re: Signs you're following a fake Twitter account

#145

Post by retox » Fri, Mar 13, 2020, 1:05 AM UTC

nradov wrote: post #135

FillardMillmore wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't begin to claim I have a solution, but I think there's steps Twitter can take to show they are acting in good faith. I believe often times, Twitter flags accounts for suspicious activity - for accounts to be reactivated, a phone number has to be provided. If Twitter wanted to, are they not capable of deploying an algorithm that serves as a dragnet to catch accounts that tick off multiple check-boxes for bot…

There are many real humans who have no phone number.

Or would never give it to Twitter.

Re: Signs you're following a fake Twitter account

#146

Post by Polylactic_acid » Fri, Mar 13, 2020, 1:17 AM UTC

mikedilger wrote: post #127

The bot panic is IMHO overblown. This comment is however NOT a defense of bots. I think bot detection and deletion of bot accounts would be a good thing. But the concern seems out of proportion. Society is full of disingenuous message amplification systems: a large subset of advertising (TV, magazine, billboards, direct marketing, etc), biased news media, spam, and now twitter bots. Twitter bots are a bit worse than…

You say that the problem is overblown but then go on to talk about the dangerous effects the problem has on discourse. Not only are the bots spewing out propaganda, but as you say they destroy the trust we have in each other which further builds the mindset of "Anything I believe in is true and anything else must be bots". In my mind this makes the bot problem very bad.

The problem is made even worse when you have non bot accounts that spam out low effort bad faith posts like "If climate change is real then explain x". It takes 2 seconds to post that but 10 minutes to properly reply. And when you look in to the post history of these accounts you can see they have been given the same answer repeatedly but ignore it because their objective is not to have a discussion or to learn, their objective is to waste peoples time and create doubt.

Re: Signs you're following a fake Twitter account

#147

Post by robotichead » Fri, Mar 13, 2020, 1:23 AM UTC

Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #17

> His two front teeth (red box) are different shapes and sizes. Which would be entirely normal for a guy from Manchester. My two front teeth are different shapes and sizes too. We don't really do "cosmetic dentistry" here in the UK, certainly not to the extent it's practised in the US.

Australian here - my two front teeth are slightly different sizes, and I am sure I am not a robot

Re: Signs you're following a fake Twitter account

#148

Post by Crosseye_Jack » Fri, Mar 13, 2020, 2:19 AM UTC

casefields wrote: post #144

brokensegue wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Verify how

You should try signing up on Nextdoor. This isn't a hard problem, nor would anyone be forced to verify themselves if they don't want to.

Nextdoor doesn’t think I’m using my real name and told me to contact support instead. Yeah F that...

Re: Signs you're following a fake Twitter account

#149

Post by jimkleiber » Fri, Mar 13, 2020, 2:20 AM UTC

brokensegue wrote: post #107

jimkleiber wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Verify how

Not exactly sure which method they'd use but seems like if they wanted to do it, they could put a lot more effort into figuring it out. I mean, Bumble, a dating app, does a simple (maybe too-easy-to-game) verification, but with so many banks having to abide by know your customer (KYC) requirements, then I think social networks could figure it out.

Re: Signs you're following a fake Twitter account

#150

Post by jimkleiber » Fri, Mar 13, 2020, 2:21 AM UTC

casefields wrote: post #144

brokensegue wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Verify how

You should try signing up on Nextdoor. This isn't a hard problem, nor would anyone be forced to verify themselves if they don't want to.

I don't know if Nextdoor's method of mailing a card to someone's mailbox would work for Twitter, but I like your example of a social network that has taken verification much more seriously.