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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

#161

Post by hodgesrm »

debaserab2 wrote: post #137
hodgesrm wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> More than seven million "hate speech" posts were removed, also a record high.

This is an example of a statistic designed to show progress without offering insight into the underlying problem, which is the insidious effect social networks have had on civil discourse. Absolute numbers are of little help in judging whether Facebook is actually addressing that issue in a meaningful way. It seems plausible that the main motivation for numbers like these is to fend off legislation to force social networks to take more responsibility for content, which would undermine Facebook's business model.

It's not all that different from the US military using body count numbers as part of propaganda to support continued funding for the Vietnam war. Here's a better reference to the controversy associated with those efforts.

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

Re: Facebook: Another three billion fake profiles culled

#162

Post by wesammikhail »

randallsquared wrote: post #149
wesammikhail wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Advertisers simply don´t know. The reason most of them don´t know is because there are virtually no tools available that can distinguish between a real user and a fake user. Only FB can make that assessment with some degree of certainty and even that can´t be trusted. External partners have been given a choice: either advertise at the risk of it being some garbage traffic, or not advertise at all. And for obvious rea…

> either advertise at the risk of it being some garbage traffic, or not advertise at all. And for obvious reasons, the latter is what people choose to do. Do you mean "the former"? 'Cause, you know, there are still ads.

yes sorry, I had a brain fart when I wrote that!

Re: Facebook: Another three billion fake profiles culled

#163

Post by soulofmischief »

mrlanderson wrote: post #159
soulofmischief wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, just gotta pass the robot test.

Your backwards email doesn't work yo

Thank you for bringing that to my attention... small oversight on my part. Just recently switched providers.

It should work now.

Re: Facebook: Another three billion fake profiles culled

#164

Post by derefr »

panarky wrote: post #136
Scoundreller wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Use the opposite algorithm: cull by lifetime value descending. Gets the bots and the viral celebrities!

(I know it's untenable, but I'd honestly love to see what the equivalent of https://millionshort.com/ for Twitter or YouTube would be like, where the top million contributors and all shares/comments about them were hidden. What would be "hot"? High-value niche-interest stuff?)

Re: Facebook: Another three billion fake profiles culled

#165

Post by slim »

mettamage wrote: post #89

Well fortunately they didn't catch my account. And I'm happy they didn't. My fake account allows me to: 1. Login to websites that I don't want to share my actual contacts to but just my real name (my fake account has my real name and my real account a fake-ish name so that I can't be Googled too easily). 2. Disable that annoying wall by not having a lot of friends. 3. Be part of meaningful groups (only 1 so far), bec…

I bet Facebook links your fake account to your real account internally and you count as 1 MAU in their stats.

Re: Facebook: Another three billion fake profiles culled

#166

Post by repolfx »

stephenr wrote: post #115
repolfx wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed not, but I think maybe that's the point. There are lots of cases where you can disagree with the scientific consensus without being "anti-science", whatever that means. Basically all scientific or logical analysis about power generation yields a pro-nuclear conclusion and thus anti-nuclear campaigners tend to make arguments about priorities rather than claim their opponents are anti-science; they argue the ris…

> Basically all scientific or logical analysis about power generation yields a pro-nuclear conclusion What's the scientific analysis that says power plants have on average cost a metric fuck ton more to clean up than was ever expected or planned for, or that there is still no effective plan to get rid of the waste they produce? See this is my point. I can admit that some scientists are no doubt pro-nuclear, and pro-G…

Remember that fossil fuel burning power plants also generate a ton of waste and nobody has a realistic plan to clean that up either (beyond CO2 extraction or geo-engineering, neither of which are more plausible than nuclear waste containment).

It's easy to argue nuclear power sucks when compared to a theoretical ideal. When compared to forms of power that dump their problematic waste into the atmosphere where it's nearly impossible to get back, having the nasty stuff conveniently packed into cylinders, ready for dropping into the continental shelf, doesn't seem like such a bad deal.

Re: Facebook: Another three billion fake profiles culled

#167

Post by stephenr »

repolfx wrote: post #166
stephenr wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Basically all scientific or logical analysis about power generation yields a pro-nuclear conclusion What's the scientific analysis that says power plants have on average cost a metric fuck ton more to clean up than was ever expected or planned for, or that there is still no effective plan to get rid of the waste they produce? See this is my point. I can admit that some scientists are no doubt pro-nuclear, and pro-G…

Remember that fossil fuel burning power plants also generate a ton of waste and nobody has a realistic plan to clean that up either (beyond CO2 extraction or geo-engineering, neither of which are more plausible than nuclear waste containment). It's easy to argue nuclear power sucks when compared to a theoretical ideal. When compared to forms of power that dump their problematic waste into the atmosphere where it's ne…

> when compared to a theoretical ideal.

Renewable energy is not theoretical.

> nasty stuff conveniently packed into cylinders, ready for dropping into the continental shelf

Your plan for highly radioactive waste is to put it in canisters and drop them into the ocean.. sure, what could possibly go wrong?

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