I've been writing about this for years but it's insane to me that Twitter is not stopping this. They are contributing both to group psychosis and the destruction of democracy through the spread of disinformation.
Gotta keep those MAU counts up!
Signs you're following a fake Twitter account
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Re: Signs you're following a fake Twitter account
#42I've been writing about this for years but it's insane to me that Twitter is not stopping this. They are contributing both to group psychosis and the destruction of democracy through the spread of disinformation.
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Re: Signs you're following a fake Twitter account
#43I've been writing about this for years but it's insane to me that Twitter is not stopping this. They are contributing both to group psychosis and the destruction of democracy through the spread of disinformation.
How else will the populist cults survive?! /s
Re: Signs you're following a fake Twitter account
#44I've been writing about this for years but it's insane to me that Twitter is not stopping this. They are contributing both to group psychosis and the destruction of democracy through the spread of disinformation.
They have conflicting incentives, it's the same problem all social networks have. Bot accounts qualitatively detract from the real user experience, but substantially inflate quantitative activity metrics, if artificially.
Policing bot accounts improves the quality of the site, but hands Elliot Management and others more ammunition that social isn't growing to expectations. Unfortunately these sites continue to pick to optimize the latter rather than the former.
Re: Signs you're following a fake Twitter account
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've seen that in some comments I made on another story. Not sure whether it's Russians or Russian bots or just HN-reading Trump fans.
The down voting has begun! @dang, I wonder if this is something you can address somehow?!
Did you ever consider people don't agree with your opinion? I am anti Trump but not everybody is. Also there are bots on all sides of the political spectrum as evidenced by the article you are commenting on which dealt with an account pumping Bernie.
Re: Signs you're following a fake Twitter account
#46Systems like TPDNE can generate random fake people but can they generate multiple different images of the same fake person? If that is not the case then the existence of different photos should prove a person is real.
This was directly addressed in the article and no they cannot.
Re: Signs you're following a fake Twitter account
#47I've been writing about this for years but it's insane to me that Twitter is not stopping this. They are contributing both to group psychosis and the destruction of democracy through the spread of disinformation.
And how exactly do you propose to stop this on scale? The problem is harder than it looks.
Re: Signs you're following a fake Twitter account
#48I have a much easier rule set for fake Twitter account detection:
Are they saying something I want to hear? Yes? Fake.
That's the complete ruleset. I do not follow anyone on Twitter as a result.
Re: Signs you're following a fake Twitter account
#49> His two front teeth (red box) are different shapes and sizes. Which would be entirely normal for a guy from Manchester. My two front teeth are different shapes and sizes too. We don't really do "cosmetic dentistry" here in the UK, certainly not to the extent it's practised in the US.
And my ears are asymmetrical. It does show up in photos from front on (though perhaps not to the extent in this article).
Re: Signs you're following a fake Twitter account
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
The down voting has begun! @dang, I wonder if this is something you can address somehow?!
Did you ever consider people don't agree with your opinion? I am anti Trump but not everybody is. Also there are bots on all sides of the political spectrum as evidenced by the article you are commenting on which dealt with an account pumping Bernie.
Yes, I have considered that, however the downvote patterns on those topics are unusual for HN. I've been here a few years, and know when something feels a bit off. Also, I'm not saying something that is wildly incorrect - just go on Twitter onto DT's account - what I'm reporting is self-evident. Do you disagree?
Edit: also, if I don't mention DT's name, but refer to him in other more cryptic ways, I (and other HN users I know) get upvoted. Basically if you mention his name, it seems to get flagged up to bots/users to investigate...