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Facebook: Another three billion fake profiles culled

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Facebook: Another three billion fake profiles culled

#131

Post by throwaway94843 »

spangry wrote: post #130
throwaway94843 wrote: post #119

Facebook has laughably weak moderation. Twitter, despite having stricter moderation (which seldom seems to result in consequences), seems to have an even bigger problem. An election in a certain country (I'm wary of even mentioning the name of that country, lest I be bombarded) exposed a huge army of dubious accounts shutting down dissent. In another country, a network of Twitter bots attempted to start a race war. T…

Why don’t we just shut off the internet entirely? That’ll stop the spread of “viral garbage” for sure.

The internet is decentralized. Social networks are centralized attention monopolising machines where sophisticated algorithms work to manipulate users. Social networks enable virality on a scale not seen before, which provides a massive incentive to bad actors.

Virality via email didn’t have the same impact, simply because there was so much spam that people don’t trust the medium. USENET was similar, with the trolls drowned out by pure spam, and no one trusting anyone.

Social media presents unique challenges that do not exist on other parts of the internet.

Re: Facebook: Another three billion fake profiles culled

#132

Post by soulofmischief »

viraptor wrote: post #83
soulofmischief wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been freaking me out lately. I am trying to form a model of how a society would typically evolve past this situation and continue to advance and spread while maintaining humane and truly representative systems of government. So far I haven't come up with anything good. But it is a singularity. We don't know what is on the other side. Or if there even is another side. We are stumbling backwards into a world w…

> I think it would be interesting to start a company around the idea of creating a certificate authority and system for provisioning and securely storing keys on a hardware level in order to sign and verify "unmodified" footage. This is also described in (if I remember correctly) "The player of games" where videos were widely known as impossible to trust due to how easy it is to make fakes, but AI entities could test…

The idea of compelling an AI to testify in court is fascinating. I wonder if there could eventually be a civil case about this.

Re: Facebook: Another three billion fake profiles culled

#133

Post by hodgesrm »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #43

> "During that six-month period, Facebook removed more than three billion fake accounts - more than ever before. More than seven million "hate speech" posts were removed, also a record high." Any sense of context here? For example, seven million might be a raw record high, but of how many total posts would be far more telling. Same for fake accounts. Is that rate up? Down? Was there a time when FB wasn't as vigilant…

Looks as though body counts are back. Not an encouraging sign for getting this mess cleaned up. [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_count

Re: Facebook: Another three billion fake profiles culled

#134

Post by ummonk »

throwaway94843 wrote: post #131
spangry wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don’t we just shut off the internet entirely? That’ll stop the spread of “viral garbage” for sure.

The internet is decentralized. Social networks are centralized attention monopolising machines where sophisticated algorithms work to manipulate users. Social networks enable virality on a scale not seen before, which provides a massive incentive to bad actors. Virality via email didn’t have the same impact, simply because there was so much spam that people don’t trust the medium. USENET was similar, with the trolls…

>Social networks are centralized attention monopolising machines where sophisticated algorithms work to manipulate users.

That's not true for WhatsApp though is it? It's just messaging + forwarding, not unlike email.

Re: Facebook: Another three billion fake profiles culled

#135

Post by 333c »

jobigoud wrote: post #124
wolco wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would resizing the window smaller do the same?

Haven't tested but moving to resposive might trigger a user agent change. Can the same be done on FF?

Firefox has a mode where you can choose from a dropdown of phone/tablet types, and it will set your user agent and screen size appropriately. I believe it's called "Responsive Design Mode."

Re: Facebook: Another three billion fake profiles culled

#136

Post by panarky »

Scoundreller wrote: post #108
forgotmypw wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They did, however, "catch" my Instagram account, which was only used by a human (me). Since posting is not possible without installing the app, I never posted anything, but I did have a profile picture, followed accounts, and commented on posts. Then, one day, I tried to log in, and it was gone. Email address not recognized in password reset. No trace of any kind. So long, Instagram.

If this happens to my FirstName+LastName accounts I’ve staked out, I’ll be pissed. My guess is that they label every account with a lifetime customer value number, and if the costs of your database entry is more than that, they cull it for “being a bot”.

Bots wouldn't exist if they didn't generate engagement, and engagement is the currency of Facebook.

So if the bot-detection algorithm works by lifetime customer value, it would cull real accounts and leave the bots alone.

Re: Facebook: Another three billion fake profiles culled

#137

Post by debaserab2 »

hodgesrm wrote: post #133
chiefalchemist wrote: post #43

> "During that six-month period, Facebook removed more than three billion fake accounts - more than ever before. More than seven million "hate speech" posts were removed, also a record high." Any sense of context here? For example, seven million might be a raw record high, but of how many total posts would be far more telling. Same for fake accounts. Is that rate up? Down? Was there a time when FB wasn't as vigilant…

Looks as though body counts are back. Not an encouraging sign for getting this mess cleaned up. [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_count

What do you mean exactly?

Re: Facebook: Another three billion fake profiles culled

#138

Post by _red »

chrisseaton wrote: post #112
alexpetralia wrote: post #111

To what degree are advertisers aware that the profiles which see their ads may not be genuine users? I suspect they either don't know, or have no alternatives.

Do fake profiles 'see' ads? They don't artificially browse around the site, to create impressions, or do they?

But doesn't FB use the existence of said profiles as a lure for advertisers? (eg. Your ad could reach any of our 1B members...)

Seems like a class-action lawsuit in the making.

Re: Facebook: Another three billion fake profiles culled

#139

Post by panarky »

darkwizard42 wrote: post #99
jug wrote: post #95

Holy moly! I thought FB only had that many users to begin with. When FB announces user counts I assume they include bots to bolster the numbers and only a few years back the number was ~1 billion??

You might be confusing their reported numbers with total inactive accounts. They regularly report their Monthly Active Users which have been >1B recently.

MAUs were 2.38 billion as of March 31, 2019, an increase of 8% year-over-year.

https://investor.fb.com/investor-news/press-release-details/...

Re: Facebook: Another three billion fake profiles culled

#140

Post by panarky »

udfalkso wrote: post #121
throwaway94843 wrote: post #119

Facebook has laughably weak moderation. Twitter, despite having stricter moderation (which seldom seems to result in consequences), seems to have an even bigger problem. An election in a certain country (I'm wary of even mentioning the name of that country, lest I be bombarded) exposed a huge army of dubious accounts shutting down dissent. In another country, a network of Twitter bots attempted to start a race war. T…

Moderation is an extremely hard problem to deal with well. Have you ever attempted to manage a community?

"Move fast and break things" is all well and good until you build something so big, so pervasive, and so dangerous that you can't fix it without turning it off completely.
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