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How about the SEC opens an investigation into whether Twitter is defrauding investors/advertisers by including bot accounts in user metrics? Or is that too hard
by sigmar 9y ago
How about the SEC opens an investigation into whether Twitter is defrauding investors/advertisers by including bot accounts in user metrics? Or is that too hard to prove?
- bradleyankrom 9y agoI think the bigger challenge would be convincing the SEC that including the bots in their user metrics constitutes fraud.
- QAPereo 9y agoThe bots count towards ad revenue, so add prior knowledge by Twitter, and boom... fraud.
- bradleyankrom 9y agoYeah, but they are still real accounts that exist. AFAIK, whether they're operated by humans or machines isn't a consideration when reporting user numbers.
- BoiledCabbage 9y agoBut your comment almost says it: Whether or not they're actual users isn't a consideration when reporting user numbers. Are they reporting user numbers or account #s? Is it ok if they generate 1billion accoints themselves? Why/why not? What's different? Impressions are based on "eyeballs" on ads. Machines look at ads. Customers can project ad blocker %.
- bradleyankrom 9y agoIntent to defraud would be clear if they generated a billion new, fake accounts.
- ImSkeptical 9y agoWhy is it not clear if they report metrics that suggest they have more users and higher engagement than they do?
- beepboopbeep 9y agoThe purpose of buying ad space is to expose your product to people as an impression or as an action. If I tell you I can sell you a service that will show your ads to 10 people and you agree to give me money for that statement, but 5 of those people are running 2 accounts each, that's misleading and, dare I say, fraudulent.
- rhizome 9y agoYou're wading into "plausible deniability" territory.
- porfirium 9y agoBot use endpoints that don't return ads so I don't see how they could cause fraud.
- FilterSweep 9y agoThe current US administration and Twitter/Facebook bots are in your standard strange bedfellow relationship. The GOP benefits from divisive [0][1] speech not unlike that employed by bot accounts. As long as rhetorically the bots share the same intentions as the administration, namely: divisiveness and promotion of nationalistic views, there will be minimal effort in chasing down the full extent to this defrauding. The intentions are clear - what will happen is not. The problem is you cannot prove malicious inaction. [0] https://newrepublic.com/article/125952/gop-party-fear https://newrepublic.com/article/125952/gop-party-fear [1] http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/352768-gop-senator-russian-trolls-using-nfl-spat-to-push-divisiveness-in-us http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/352768-gop-senator-russia...
- rtx 9y agoYou mean to say all those anti Trump bots replying to his tweets are doing him a favour?
- FilterSweep 9y agoI mean to say all of those pro Trump bots organizing rallies for him in America out of Russia ;) [0] [0] http://thehill.com/policy/technology/351557-russian-actors-may-have-organized-pro-trump-rallies-on-facebook-report http://thehill.com/policy/technology/351557-russian-actors-m...
- makomk 9y agoEver noticed how Russian groups creating Facebook pages for fake pro-Trump rallies that don't exist and don't have any attendees is "Russian groups organized pro-Trump rallies on Facebook", but them creating fake (say) BLM events that don't exist and don't have any attendees is "Russia fakes black activism on Facebook to sow division"? Also, it requires a rather curious definition of "bots" to include actual people manually doing stuff like this. One that's political rather than technical.
- barsonme 9y agoBoth parties benefit from divisive speech. It allows them to argue about purity of ideas instead of the ideas themselves which is _fantastic_ for party loyalty. It's not a GOP- or Democrat-specific problem. Plus, it's not like there's only "right-leaning" bots on Twitter. Back during the election there were a couple times I tweeted something negative about DJT and my tweet was instantly retweeted and liked thousands of times by blatantly "left-leaning" bots. They hit up both sides of the aisle to stir up drama. It's practically their stated goal.
- tyingq 9y agoFacebook has been caught dead to rights a few times, like this one: "According to a recently published report, Facebook says they reach 1.5 million Swedes between the ages of 15 and 24. The problem here is that Sweden only has 1.2 million of ’em" "Facebook’s Ads Manager says that the website is capable of reaching 41 million Americans between the ages of 18 and 24. The problem is there are only 31 million Americans of that age." [1] Nothing ever happens, other than maybe some grumbling from paying advertisers. [1]https://mumbrella.com.au/will-facebook-ever-stop-bullshitting-471535 https://mumbrella.com.au/will-facebook-ever-stop-bullshittin...
- autokad 9y agoa lot of people create alternate personas for varying reasons. There are a sizable cohort of people that like to create accounts for online fantasy. also, there are many game accounts (some that even produce money) trying to police them off would be a mistake by facebook.
- tyingq 9y ago>a lot of people create alternate personas for varying reasons. I'm sure they do, but I doubt 30% of them do. That's what you'd need to balloon from 30 million to 40 million. The 30% also assumes that EVERY 18-24 year old American has a Facebook account in the first place.
- stephengillie 9y agoAnother way to slice those data - 33% don't have accounts, 33% (9.9 million) have just one account, and 33% have the remaining 30.1 million accounts spread between them - on average, 3.04 accounts per person in that group, but one or two people/groups may have thousands of accounts. Edits: Correcting math. Thanks, kbenson.
- kbenson 9y agoWell, to correct it entirely, you should probably use thirds instead of 30%, since that was either an allowance for simplicity or an error originally. I believe the correct answer is just under 3 accounts per person in the group with multiple accounts.
- mv4 9y agoSome bots are not technically bots. There may be real people behind them, but they are "employed" by various agencies as proxies for RT/likes. Some do it manually, others employ automation. Also, many of the more prominent accounts are almost fully scripted - these people aren't really "there". Here's an example of a Salesforce exec (Verified account, btw) employing "automation": https://twitter.com/iTrendTV/status/738375663229505536 https://twitter.com/iTrendTV/status/738375663229505536 We've done some twitter fraud analysis in the past, and it's terrifying.
- blowski 9y agoExactly. I know some people that are indistinguishable from bots even in a face to face conversation.
- theseatoms 9y agoHa. But the bots aren't viewing advertisements, which is what matters to shareholders.
- nkozyra 9y agoHow does accounting reconcile users who have ad blocking enabled? Do they even bother?
- kaybe 9y agoNow if you can trick the bots into viewing the ads and change their behaviour...
- Spivak 9y agoFacebook is defrauding advertisers by including ad block users in their metrics!
- mv4 9y agoBots generate engagements. "Engagements are new followers from Promoted Accounts and/or clicks, retweets or likes on Promoted Tweets. You will never be charged more than your maximum bid and you usually pay less." https://business.twitter.com/en/help/overview/twitter-ads-glossary.html https://business.twitter.com/en/help/overview/twitter-ads-gl... The bulk of all engagements now are fake/automated. P.S. as a bot, you don't need to "see" a tweet to engage.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago> How about the SEC opens an investigation into whether Twitter is defrauding investors/advertisers The SEC protects investors, not advertisers. When non-securities fraud gets companies in trouble with the SEC, it's because said companies failed to disclose the fraud or the risk of the fraud to their investors. Facebook discloses their "advertising revenue could also be adversely affected by a number of other factors, including...the availability, accuracy, and utility of analytics and measurement solutions offered by us or third parties that demonstrate the value of our ads to marketers, or our ability to further improve such tools; adverse legal developments relating to advertising, including legislative and regulatory developments and developments in litigation; decisions by marketers to reduce their advertising as a result of adverse media reports or other negative publicity involving us, our advertising metrics, content on our products, developers with mobile and web applications that are integrated with our products, or other companies in our industry..." [1] [1] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1326801/000132680117000007/fb-12312016x10k.htm#s5611039F2AC75A779AB7D0EDD63A52CA https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1326801/000132680117... Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice. Don't commit fraud.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- mv4 9y agoNot too hard to prove, just need to know where to look. The problem isn't just bots, but fraud in general.
- katastic 9y agoDidn't the same problem show up at Reddit where they were capping the visible user numbers of certain subreddits? They were showing massively higher numbers on their advertisers page than the subreddit front page. So either they're inflating numbers and lying to advertisers... or they're capping numbers and lying to make the "deplorable" subs look less popular.