Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

theintercept.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 190 posts

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

#111

Post by stordoff »

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…

> But are we really supposed to retweet more than we like? I was treating retweets as a stronger version of ‘like’

I'm in the same boat, but I'm not sure you could take it any other way. At least in my usage, 'like' is a signal to the poster that I liked their comment/it was a beneficial contribution, whereas 'retweet' is that AND I think it would be useful/interesting to a weirder audience. Retweeting more than likely seems backwards, and more like spam.

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

#112

Post by downandout »

stuartd wrote: post #51
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.

Well, they're obviously not the only criteria, as the text you mention was immediately preceded by "Not only did these Twitter accounts typically include profile photos of adult actresses, but they also had similar bios, followed similar accounts... "

There are many adult actresses, camgirls, etc. on Twitter that are trying to build a following that would still meet this criteria. Not all of them are bots.

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

#113

Post by jdminhbg »

Cyph0n wrote: post #64
scottmf wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could say the same about Twitter and Facebook.

Twitter is not an effective discussion platform imo. Facebook, in my experience at least, makes it pretty damned hard to find active, technical communities.

> Twitter is not an effective discussion platform imo.

It doesn't need to be effective for discussion to be valuable. It can be an effective broadcast platform, or research platform, or...

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

#114

Post by sincerely »

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?

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

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

#115

Post by Nition »

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…

> Assuming too much retweeting will clog my followers’ feeds.

You can choose to mute retweets from an account without muting the whole account, so that's not too much of a problem. If you retweet too much they can mute your retweets.

Recently something changed though, and now things you Like can also show up in your friend's feeds, and I haven't found any way on the default twitter site to mute those. So Likes can actually be more spammy than retweets now!

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

#116

Post by bossx »

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.

Facebook desperately needs this feature.

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

#117

Post by yorby »

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?

presidential communications?

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

#118

Post by jpindar »

ianai wrote: post #46
lazugod wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this a reason to not block them?

Sounds like a great reason to block them. Can we just shut down twitter already? It seems like something made for marketing purposes that was pushed on people and wound up harmful. (Granted, that’s not practical.)

Why can't you just not use Twitter, and leave it to those of us who like it?

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

#119

Post by ImSkeptical »

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?

I think of it as like a magazine. I follow many people I think are interesting and news companies I like. Usually they are tweeting links to articles or interviews I'm interested.

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

#120

Post by branchless »

jeffwass wrote: post #60
TheSmiddy wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you follow any billionaires and read their comments they are full of crypto scams. Things like @elommusk replying to @elonmusk saying "to celebrate this awesome news I'm going to hand out some free bitcoins!, just send 0.1BTC to and i'll return 1BTC!" then 100 replies from other accounts saying "thanks Elon, you're the greatest!"

Do people actually fall for this? I thought this is the whole reason to use the blue check mark, so you can immediately tell real Elon from bot Elon. But there are weird celebrity bots too. Eg, I followed Adam Sandler, and within a few hours a couple Adam Sandler bots started following me. They just had retweets of Adam Sandler tweets, but also a few hundred followers. Makes me wonders who are the people that follow…

Whenever anyone follows me on Twitter I check their account. If it's not someone genuine i block them. Wouldn't work for someone famous but for a normal person it's worth it.
Post reply on HN