Battling Fake Accounts, Twitter to Slash Millions of Followers • Hacker News Board

Re: Battling Fake Accounts, Twitter to Slash Millions of Followers

#111

Post by spookyuser » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 2:22 PM UTC

Strom wrote: post #106

spookyuser wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is so much worse than this now. There are dozens of fake accounts under every one of his tweets and it doesn't even seem like these accounts are trying anymore. Their names are sometimes random strings of letters, and they just change their profile picture to a screenshotted version of Musks. Oh and once you report one of these accounts it can take weeks for Twitter to do anything I also find it so strang…

> They could even naively block normal users from having a verified user's profile picture and this problem would virtually not exist. I'm all for Twitter doing more, especially as they seemingly do nothing at all to combat fake accounts. However I'm sure these spammers could just adjust a few pixels on the profile image and a naive block wouldn't do anything.

Yeah I agree with that. Maybe they'll need a more sophisticated solution that can check for visual similarity. But It just feels like they haven't even acknowledged this as a problem, so I would be happy with any countermeasures right now.

Re: Battling Fake Accounts, Twitter to Slash Millions of Followers

#112

Post by deadmetheny » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 4:53 PM UTC

gaius wrote: post #94

swvjeff wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry but that is just a horrendous idea unless N is a very high number

Why do you think so? It would solve all Twitter’s financial and social/cultural problems practically overnight

Twitter needs its users infinitely more than Twitter's users need Twitter. Charging anyone to use the service at all is counter-productive.

Re: Battling Fake Accounts, Twitter to Slash Millions of Followers

#113

Post by astrodust » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 6:38 PM UTC

matchbok wrote: post #72

pavel_lishin wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a super, super simple problem. No offense, but that's incredibly easy to say when you're not the one responsible for doing it.

Verifying humans is a solved problem.

Not really. You come up with a method and someone will come up with a way of factory-farming their way around it.

Re: Battling Fake Accounts, Twitter to Slash Millions of Followers

#114

Post by astrodust » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 6:39 PM UTC

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #102

pavel_lishin wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please fill us in.

I share your skepticism. CAPTCHAs are at best a game of cat-and-mouse, and are always open to relay attacks anyway. You can still verify in-person, and even check documents, but no web company would even consider doing that, even for something like an optional 'fully verified account' tag.

Yeah, that sounds practical for every start-up that needs to do human validation.

Re: Battling Fake Accounts, Twitter to Slash Millions of Followers

#115

Post by Sommer » Fri, Jul 13, 2018, 1:10 AM UTC

cpeterso wrote: post #98

Sommer wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is actually a foolproof way to shut off Liked tweets (and retweets) forever. You can only do it on desktop - but go to Twitter/Settings/Muted Words. In there, make sure "From people you don't follow" is selected along with "Timeline", then individually add the list of common stopwords to your muted words. I listed the ones I use below, you can add more but I've not seen a retweet or liked tweet since doing this…

Clever! But if you have selected "Timeline", aren't you muting both tweets and retweets with your stop words? Twitter's UI makes the "From people you don't follow" option look like it only applies to "Notifications", not "Timeline". Alternately, you can control whether you see what individual people you follow are retweeting with "Turn off retweets": https://twitter.com/following

yes it will mute retweets too. the desktop ui allows you to pick only the people that you do not follow - the interface and options are different on mobile, just fyi. they don't make it very clear either way.

>/following yea really wish you could do that with likes too!

Re: Battling Fake Accounts, Twitter to Slash Millions of Followers

#116

Post by burfog » Fri, Jul 13, 2018, 1:41 AM UTC

andygates wrote: post #103

prolikewh0a wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious how many "suspicious" accounts will be real people simply expressing their views. Twitter does openly admit to censorship [0], so it's not exactly a wild thought. [0] https://www.lgraham.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/4766f54d-...

Human logs on ,sees suspension notice, goes through unsuspension process. Bot dies. Those humans are usually very bot-like retweet mills anyway, in my experience. Thou complain'st too much.

Nope.

Human logs in, sees Twitter demanding personal information like a phone number or worse, goes away.