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Twitter Takes Aim at Anonymous Egg Accounts

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Re: Twitter Takes Aim at Anonymous Egg Accounts

#141

Post by dotnetisnotdead »

eropple wrote: post #128
dotnetisnotdead wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I relate to this 100%. I'm a lifelong Democrat, but in the last 2 years the culture has changed so drastically, I am being pushed to the center. I'm not alone in this, and it's bad for democrats. They don't realize it just yet. The over use of "Bigot", "Racist", "Nazi", etc completely devalue the words. They take away their power. 10 years ago nobody wanted to be called a Nazi but now people laugh it off. That's dang…

> When Suzy soccer mom says she wants some stricter vetting for refugees I don't disagree with most of your post--but in the land of the real, it is very difficult to say that vetting for refugees in the United States is not already an intensely strict process. The people asserting it's not are self-described nationalists who wish to stop immigration...or are sourcing what they're saying from them. That's where the m…

>but in the land of the real, it is very difficult to say that vetting for refugees in the United States is not already an intensely strict process. The people asserting it's not are self-described nationalists who wish to stop immigration...or are sourcing what they're saying from them.

I see your overall point, but the problem with the assertion here is Suzy's opinion is WRONG, not just different and it must be wrong because of where she gets her information. So you take that and then amplify it a little and you get "Suzy is a Nazi" and that's where everything breaks down.

Suzy may not be wrong, and may have a valid opinion based on her own personal research or experience but that's unacceptable to the left of today. Everything is absolute and if Suzy doesn't agree with it, she is wrong and watches too much Fox News! Dog Whistles! Gaslighting! Facism!

It's not just the left that does this of course, but as a member of the team I feel disenfranchised when it happens.

Re: Twitter Takes Aim at Anonymous Egg Accounts

#142

Post by Balgair »

AlwaysRock wrote: post #120
Balgair wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, I could see ol' Zuck sitting there in his Herman-Miller Aeron chair looking at the internal numbers of FB 'users' and seeing the number be ~15 billion accounts that their in-house 'bot filters still think are 'real' people. He says to himself: 'You know, maybe I could tell the UN that there really are 15 billion people out there and they are all on FB. Ha, I mean, a lot of people really might believe me.' H…

Do you have a blog? Genuine question.

Nah, it's best to keep the ranting low-key and not tied to me personally. If you see my comment karma, I say enough dumb stuff already ;)

Re: Twitter Takes Aim at Anonymous Egg Accounts

#143

Post by kordless »

anigbrowl wrote: post #84
notadoc wrote: post #47

There are massive bot farms on Twitter that are obvious to even casual observers and most of them don't have "egg" accounts anymore. Look at the auto-replies to any political tweet, major news story, or from a popular account, all automated garbage that follows the same template. Why Twitter ignores the crap which pollutes their product is amazing to me. Maybe they don't want to touch them because it ups the engageme…

What tools do people use to administer these? Since Twitter and other platforms seem to have no interest in fixing the problem I figure I might as well stop trying to abide by their ToS and leverage the technology for my own agenda.

What needs to happen is that they open up all the blocked account information for all users, and show when users that are blocked by X many users have deleted tweets.

The problem defined is that Twitter allows viral communication to occur in Humans, but which is being exploited in a very specific way by a small group of people who understand how to spread dissonant ideas by intentionally using polarized, meme-based arguments, which themselves are viral in nature. It's like a logic "jingle" you get stuck in your head. Or a virus.

It's on Twitter to fix the Pandora's Box they have opened with this type of infrastructure. (And I'm still sticking to my claim that Twitter is infrastructure given how much it can govern our behavior.)

Re: Twitter Takes Aim at Anonymous Egg Accounts

#144

Post by anigbrowl »

kordless wrote: post #143
anigbrowl wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What tools do people use to administer these? Since Twitter and other platforms seem to have no interest in fixing the problem I figure I might as well stop trying to abide by their ToS and leverage the technology for my own agenda.

What needs to happen is that they open up all the blocked account information for all users, and show when users that are blocked by X many users have deleted tweets. The problem defined is that Twitter allows viral communication to occur in Humans, but which is being exploited in a very specific way by a small group of people who understand how to spread dissonant ideas by intentionally using polarized, meme-based a…

OK, but any ideas on the tool front? I'm not being facetious, I've just decided that since it's a de facto free-for-all I might as well retaliate against bad actors rather than waiting for people to grow a conscience.

Re: Twitter Takes Aim at Anonymous Egg Accounts

#145

Post by m-p-3 »

unethical_ban wrote: post #2

Today, the egg, tomorrow, unverified account names. Are they going full Facebook? And filtering out keywords in messages... I suppose that's ok, and certainly their prerogative, but talk about creating more social bubbles. As much as I disagree with the random twits on the site, it reminds me that not everyone is a left-leaning political hobbyist. Hearing things you don't necessarily like is part of being an adult.

They're Digg-ing themselves.

Re: Twitter Takes Aim at Anonymous Egg Accounts

#146

Post by pmiller2 »

arprocter wrote: post #7

Interested to see how penalizing accounts for 'repeatedly tweeting at non-followers' is going to work when most of what I see on the platform is people messaging celebs who don't follow them back

So much for the strategy of tweeting at a company to resolve consumer disputes. Normally, I would say that's a good thing, but sometimes these companies just don't respond to non-public channels. Google, for instance, is notorious for making it difficult to reach an actual human in customer service.

Re: Twitter Takes Aim at Anonymous Egg Accounts

#147

Post by dsacco »

anigbrowl wrote: post #144
kordless wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What needs to happen is that they open up all the blocked account information for all users, and show when users that are blocked by X many users have deleted tweets. The problem defined is that Twitter allows viral communication to occur in Humans, but which is being exploited in a very specific way by a small group of people who understand how to spread dissonant ideas by intentionally using polarized, meme-based a…

OK, but any ideas on the tool front? I'm not being facetious, I've just decided that since it's a de facto free-for-all I might as well retaliate against bad actors rather than waiting for people to grow a conscience.

If you're seriously asking: for the most part the tools are in-house. There isn't a single widely used framework (to my knowledge...) that covers everything. Basically, you'd use a mix of something like redis, beautifulsoup, digitalocean, ansible, a fleet of shady proxies and various middleware for everything. Throw in postgres too.

If you're not using the API, all you're doing is programmatically signing up for accounts, storing the corresponding login credentials, writing a little library that assigns all outgoing bot activities to a user-agent and proxy, queues their activities and executes them. Naturally you have a little library that manages the random profile information creator - collect CSVs from data.gov such that you can create convincing random names and addresses, then use random profile pictures from Google images.

The secret sauce is not in the orchestration (someone could wrap all this up into a framework pretty easily), it's in the structuring of activities so that you don't get caught by e.g. having your bots follow each other incestuously. That's a rather less automated process and require active vigilance and tweaking.

What I have seen work in the past is partitioning the botnet such that blocks of them slowly establish signal to noisy credibility in specific niches before intermingling. Many botnet creators attempt to create a multiplier effect, recursively improving their aggregate signal score by having the bots in a massive echo chamber with each other. This is easily caught.

Bot block A should have a few thousand from around the country commenting on the election and sometimes posting memes from reddit. Bot block B should retweet thinkpieces from the tech industry and be the first submitter of various obscure but passable Medium articles. And so on, and so forth. Basically, have the bots act like humans who mostly talk about one category of thing on Twitter, but who still have enough nuance to not seem spammy.

Once your botnet hits a critical mass, you no longer need to do this as strictly in the future. You can spin up new bot blocks quickly and have the mature blocks retweet and interact with them to bring them up to the requisite signal score more quickly. At this point you can capitalize on trends and have a credible mass of followers influencing a conversation on Twitter within hours or days of the trend emerging. As it snowballs, you compound the other blocks to simulate rippling popularity throughout the system (i.e. trends become less about one niche and more about everyone, like Uber->Uber's Sexual Harassment Scandal->Sexual Harassment).

The other secret sauce is in successfully managing the network on a budget, because while all those proxies are what diversify your botnet's origins, individual proxies typically score negatively for websites actively looking to reduce bots.

Re: Twitter Takes Aim at Anonymous Egg Accounts

#148

Post by tinus_hn »

mason240 wrote: post #25
mikeash wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that you're not forced to be on Twitter means that victims can leave, but it also means that bullies can be banned. Why prefer the first option?

Great, but then I get to decide who is in the second group.

Indeed you do because you can set the rules for people trying to communicate with you yourself.

Re: Twitter Takes Aim at Anonymous Egg Accounts

#149

Post by tinus_hn »

eropple wrote: post #20
iamatworknow wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question then becomes is the necessity of having a twitter account "part of being an adult"? I'm not saying the harassment is right, mind you, and certainly doxxing and real physical threats should be treated as the criminal acts that they are, but I don't think it's something that can ever really be remedied unless the victim removes themselves from the situation. As I see it there is a sort of give and take rel…

> The question then becomes is the necessity of having a twitter account "part of being an adult"? I'm not saying the harassment is right, mind you, and certainly doxxing and real (as in tangible) physical threats should be treated as the criminal acts that they are, but I don't think it's something that can ever really be remedied unless the victim removes themselves from the situation. Oh, then we should just give…

Your list of groups you consider evil makes you look like a social justice warrior and derails the discussion while it is not relevant to your point.

Re: Twitter Takes Aim at Anonymous Egg Accounts

#150

Post by intoverflow2 »

rhizome wrote: post #80
intoverflow2 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> including "automatically block accounts under X days old that @ me" How can a new user (who isn't a harasser) engage with the Twitter service if they get auto-blocked when they try to engage with anyone on the platform?

If "engage" means "HA HA U SUK TRUMP UR AZZ MAKE ME A SANDWICH" then maybe Twitter isn't a good place for them.

I clearly said not a harasser...

> maybe Twitter isn't a good place for them could have fooled me because if you built a platform purely for harassment it would resemble twitter closely

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