Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Facebook: Another three billion fake profiles culled

bbc.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 167 posts

Re: Facebook: Another three billion fake profiles culled

#91

Post by Doubl »

I haven't got a Facebook account. If I did set one up it would probably be with a fake identity. I've sometimes been tempted because it would help with signing up in lots of other places. But Facebook (or Gavin as the Swype on my phone keeps calling it!) would probably figure out who I was anyway. And the thought of that creeps me out.

Re: Facebook: Another three billion fake profiles culled

#92

Post by Doubl »

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'd be betting that they are going after huge blocks of fake accounts that they can link together somehow. Someone like you with a single fake account, they'll live with. They probably know that's so and so's other account. He likes to use that one on his PC. ;-)

Re: Facebook: Another three billion fake profiles culled

#93

Post by klez »

prewett wrote: post #90
criley2 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even without political advertising, the amount of fake news spread in Groups in the form of memes and images is absolutely fracking staggering. If you go through the facebook feed of a conservative facebook user in their 50s+, you quite literally will see all lies and propaganda, and nothing real (for one ex: see the horribly faked Nancy Pelosi video that spread like wildfire yesterday, despite it's obvious fakeness)…

> There is no viable solution either. There is a solution: make a cost to post. In the past it cost real money to propagate your ideas, so your audience was limited. The only way to get money was to be rich or to be popular enough for people to pay for your newspaper/magazine/mailing list. The internet lets anyone have a language-wide reach for free. I guess one should expect that in this situation the messages that…

Ok, but if you make it pay-per-post than only those with money can post, which is a different kind of problem but still a problem nonetheless.

Re: Facebook: Another three billion fake profiles culled

#94

Post by zrobotics »

maximus1983 wrote: post #81
specialist wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"conservative facebook user in their 50s+" I have two additional theories for why the boomers are more prone to spreading fake news. Maturity Every person, demographic adopting a new media has to go through the whole maturity cycle anew. We've all been there. (For me it was CompuServe, BIX, FidoNet.) We've always had trolls, memes, jokes etc. So netiquette and its predecessors emerge. It takes a while for the novelty…

The whole fake news / conspiracy stuff gets me. I find conspiracy theories to be almost like some sort of sci-fi / fantasy lore. I love watching stuff like Ancient Aliens, I know it is complete nonsense but it is fun laughing at all the begging the question they do. My other half believes in some super natural stuff such as horoscopes etc and she gets a bit annoyed at me and my brother taking the mickey out of it but…

As someone who enjoys coast to coast AM, I get the entertainment value; but there is real danger and harm in a lot of it. Just look at the harm Alex "turn the frogs gay" Jones has caused, specifically to the parents of Sandy Hook victims.

Although you are right in that actively suppressing it can make it worse, since that very easily can be spun into "I'm right, the globalists are out to get me and are censoring me because I'm speaking the truth". Perhaps the best thing to do is laugh it down, but after 2016 somehow it's all gotten less funny.

Re: Facebook: Another three billion fake profiles culled

#97

Post by dredmorbius »

In the months prior to the Google+ shutdown, I took several pulls of the full listing of Communities on the site via sitemaps files. Though not the same level of detail as profiles, this produced interesting results.

The total net number of communities was increasing by about 1 percent per month (80,000 communites added). At the same time, about four thousand communities per day were being removed (unavailable when queried in the 24 hours following the sitemaps pull), or 120,000/mo. Total (gross, not net) new community creation rate was quite high: 200,000/mo.

This continued until new community creation was disabled in February 2019, in advance of the site shutdown. Total communities numbered over 8.1 million at final count.

https://joindiaspora.com/posts/13767351

A pretty considerable level of churn.

Re: Facebook: Another three billion fake profiles culled

#98

Post by bArray »

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…

I suspect a significant number of posts removed for "hate speech" could have been people sharing videos/documents related to the Christchurch terrorist attack. It depends on the definition of a post and whether the BBC interpretted Facebook's message correctly. The number 1.5 million gets thrown around a lot [1]. I also heard the value 4 million, but cannot find the source. If that's true, then I imagine the details of other such attacks were also suppressed.

[1] https://www.engadget.com/2019/04/24/facebook-christchurch-vi...

Re: Facebook: Another three billion fake profiles culled

#99

Post by darkwizard42 »

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.
Post reply on HN