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Twitter Followers Vanish Amid Inquiries into Fake Accounts

nytimes.com

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Re: Twitter Followers Vanish Amid Inquiries into Fake Accounts

#121

Post by sbarre »

ActsJuvenile wrote: post #35

Twitter is in a dire situation. As a fun project I wrote a Lua - Torch bot to search for certain tweets and hit like on them based on sentiment analysis. I realized that API query results were mostly news bots, retweet bots, corporate PR bots, social media aggregator platforms like Buffer, and just plain old spam bots. How bad was it? After filtering 1,000 tweets per query, I barely found 10-20 real human users. That…

Using Twitter for search/discovery by hashtag or keyword is totally pointless.

I follow specific people that I've discovered outside of the network, or by referral, and as a result my feed is basically "all signal".

This seems like the only reasonable way to use Twitter now..

Re: Twitter Followers Vanish Amid Inquiries into Fake Accounts

#122

Post by Shivetya »

snowwrestler wrote: post #86
nkkollaw wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've yet to figure out why anyone would consume any kind of content on Twitter. I've used it for a while, and what I got is that it's goos for (and people use it) to spam others about your projects or show off. However, if you try to use it to get news or updates on anything it is the least efficient, most stressful thing I've ever used. I see Twitter as a good tool for outages, natural disasters, and protests. That'…

Twitter is the most awesome, amazing source of news and updates I've found. For example because I follow Tavis Ormandy on Twitter I know that a vulnerability related to bittorrent will soon be released by Google's Project Zero. That said, it took months to get my feed to where it is today. It's not easy for each person to find the mix of accounts that is best for them. My recommendation is, be fast to follow folks wh…

are there services out there which curate the channels available to insure quality and content? Say if I wanted to follow a particular sport or team, are there services which can set it up? Same goes for any subject

Re: Twitter Followers Vanish Amid Inquiries into Fake Accounts

#123

Post by bhj »

anfilt wrote: post #80

I am not sure why this is a problem, but I don't really use twitter. Yes, fake accounts exist. It's only twitter's problem not sure why this something the NY times would care about?

If a fake account is using the name and likeness (pun intended?) of a real person (as many are, having harvested them from real accounts) then it becomes the impersonated's problem as well.

Re: Twitter Followers Vanish Amid Inquiries into Fake Accounts

#124

Post by jstarfish »

ionforce wrote: post #70
ForrestN wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of Tumblr porn is actually very specifically (and astutely) curated. The few times I've visited, it's actually a much nicer experience than porn websites. If anything, I think Tumblr would be wise to lean into being, among other things, a space for the sharing of erotic content. Maybe there's some spam but it's pretty easy to find your way into non-spam on Tumblr in my experience.

Isn't that a bit thorny since most of the content is copyrighted...

Not your problem when the content is user-uploaded.

Re: Twitter Followers Vanish Amid Inquiries into Fake Accounts

#125

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

FussyZeus wrote: post #73
chimeracoder wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> BONUS: Guess who else is spamming their post feed: Tumblr. Tumblr didn't allow any adult content or keyword search; since Marissa Mayer took over she seems to have loosened that policy to fluff the numbers. Tumblr today is drowning in porn. ...what? Tumblr was known for porn long before it sold to Yahoo. If anything, Tumblr started cracking down on blogs with adult content afterwards (for example, requiring users t…

One of Tumblr's differentiators is allowing adult content. It's very hard to find places friendly to that when you're looking to distribute your artwork and get a following going. Thankfully more and more websites are based out of other countries now and don't need to swim in the puritan current of the US.

Try hosting such artwork out of India.

Re: Twitter Followers Vanish Amid Inquiries into Fake Accounts

#126

Post by [deleted] »

ForrestN wrote: post #46
ActsJuvenile wrote: post #35

Twitter is in a dire situation. As a fun project I wrote a Lua - Torch bot to search for certain tweets and hit like on them based on sentiment analysis. I realized that API query results were mostly news bots, retweet bots, corporate PR bots, social media aggregator platforms like Buffer, and just plain old spam bots. How bad was it? After filtering 1,000 tweets per query, I barely found 10-20 real human users. That…

A lot of Tumblr porn is actually very specifically (and astutely) curated. The few times I've visited, it's actually a much nicer experience than porn websites. If anything, I think Tumblr would be wise to lean into being, among other things, a space for the sharing of erotic content. Maybe there's some spam but it's pretty easy to find your way into non-spam on Tumblr in my experience.

[deleted]

Re: Twitter Followers Vanish Amid Inquiries into Fake Accounts

#127

Post by intopieces »

scrollaway wrote: post #33
intopieces wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Enabled protests in dictatorial regimes, sure. But let’s not overstate social media’s positive impact: nearly a decade after the Arab Spring, few governments outside of Tunisia look markedly different. The ability of state actors to use social media to spread propaganda should also be considered in our tally of social media impact. The jury is still out on whether they are a net good.

This isn't an argument about whether social media is a net positive. This is about people , and whether Twitter protects its users at risk, or builds a system which just begs for government to request their real names.

It is an argument about whether lack of verification on these platforms is worth preserving. That is not proved convincingly by the instances of protests they allow, since this same practice also allows propaganda.

Re: Twitter Followers Vanish Amid Inquiries into Fake Accounts

#128

Post by wyager »

kibwen wrote: post #100
devonkim wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding of the Tumblr porn content is that they’re usually small clips and I believe under so many seconds doesn’t count under copyright infringement laws. However, nothing would be a problem if it was original content that had waivers and age of consent forms and such on file.

> I believe under so many seconds doesn’t count under copyright infringement laws Careful here. This appears to be referring to the concept of fair use, but firstly there are multiple criteria used to judge fair use ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use#U.S._fair_use_factors ), secondly these criteria are (intentionally) subjective and up to a judge's interpretation, and thirdly fair use is US-only.

> thirdly fair use is US-only.

That seems fine. In the interest of their userbase, companies should aim for the least copyright-damaged user experience possible; this means picking a single country (ideally one with liberal copyright law) and ignoring copyright law in other countries they aren’t based out of. If countries want to force their censorship standards, they can at least be honest about it and block the website (rather than silently deflecting the responsibility of censorship to the website itself).

Re: Twitter Followers Vanish Amid Inquiries into Fake Accounts

#129

Post by chatmasta »

ErikAugust wrote: post #114
ActsJuvenile wrote: post #35

Twitter is in a dire situation. As a fun project I wrote a Lua - Torch bot to search for certain tweets and hit like on them based on sentiment analysis. I realized that API query results were mostly news bots, retweet bots, corporate PR bots, social media aggregator platforms like Buffer, and just plain old spam bots. How bad was it? After filtering 1,000 tweets per query, I barely found 10-20 real human users. That…

I have spent several years working on a product ( https://www.rapidcrowd.co ) that cuts through the noise (bots, fake accounts, inactives) of Twitter to find real users that fit related topics - and your rough estimate of 20 real users in 1000 tweets isn't too far off. For this reason, trending topics and keyword search are essentially hijacked features. However, because I believe there are many useful bots that have…

How is what you are describing any different from sponsored tweets?

Re: Twitter Followers Vanish Amid Inquiries into Fake Accounts

#130

Post by JetSpiegel »

Shivetya wrote: post #122
snowwrestler wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter is the most awesome, amazing source of news and updates I've found. For example because I follow Tavis Ormandy on Twitter I know that a vulnerability related to bittorrent will soon be released by Google's Project Zero. That said, it took months to get my feed to where it is today. It's not easy for each person to find the mix of accounts that is best for them. My recommendation is, be fast to follow folks wh…

are there services out there which curate the channels available to insure quality and content? Say if I wanted to follow a particular sport or team, are there services which can set it up? Same goes for any subject

> Say if I wanted to follow a particular sport or team, are there services which can set it up?

It's called ESPN.

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