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While your comment certainly points a flaw in their approach, it is not something that cannot be addressed with a little bit of manpower/insider knowledge/more

While your comment certainly points a flaw in their approach, it is not something that cannot be addressed with a little bit of manpower/insider knowledge/more data. They have demonstrated a proof of concept that hunting bots on Twitter can be achieved, and that Twitter could do it easily if it wanted

dmix 9y ago
Having false positives are quite serious though, especially when it comes to shutting accounts down at scale. Sure it works on their small sample test runs, but anyone who's applied these algorithms in real life in an automated fashion understand the risks of false positives is usually far higher in practice. You will basically be put at risk for following 'controversial' accounts on Twitter of having your account delete accidentally. And businesses will have to jump through bureaucratic hoops to use legitimate automated scripts to manage accounts. It also seriously deters anonymous online speech if they force a big percentage of users to provide a unique phone number to prove they aren't a bot (the current Twitter strategy for countering spam). Not to mention the liberal sharing of information with nation states, surreptitiously or otherwise, even for people not trying to be anonymous. A phone number is a critical identifier in the surveillance industry. Getting this accurate is very important and I feel like that is being heavily downplayed in this article.
- samastur 9y ago
  Twitter already uses automation with false positives. For example get enough followers in short enough amount of time and your account can be taken offline. One of popular ways to using bots as attack weapon these days. No false positives ship has already sailed. What you can best hope now is timely response to mistakes (and as few of them as possible).
- lukasschwab 9y ago
  Deletion isn't the only option for escalation; Twitter could assemble a risk factor for a given account and opt to present captchas, for example, rather than automatically deleting. Scale captcha frequency with the risk factor. Captchas are certainly not foolproof, but they up the difficulty of running a huge number of phony accounts while having a minimal impact on normal Twitter usage.
apeace 9y ago
I think there is more than one flaw. They started by identifying "left- or right-leaning" tweets. Then they decided that everything in-between were bots. Who decides what is left and what is right, and who decided that anything other than those extremes is "fake news"? There are ethical questions here. It scares me that we now find it acceptable to classify accounts as "bots" or "Russian-backed" because of any content in the tweets, even if it's #LockHerUp or #BuildTheWall. If people really believe these things, shouldn't they be allowed to say them? What if tomorrow, something that you strongly believe in becomes labelled "fake news" or "propaganda", and your own accounts are shut down? The methodology is flawed in the most fundamental way. There are other technologies that can be used for detecting bots[0]. Twitter should use it. [0] https://security.googleblog.com/2014/12/are-you-robot-introducing-no-captcha.html https://security.googleblog.com/2014/12/are-you-robot-introd...
- rohanphadte 9y ago
  Hey, I'm a creator of the tool written in the article! In our model, we look at hundreds of features per account. Polarizing tweet content is not the only thing the model looks at. If an account is tweeting OC content, it's a clear indication that account is human. Twitter's policy allows bots of their platform, and most are harmless! There are bots that tweet out the upcoming songs on a radio station. Unfortunately, a CAPTCHA would eliminate all bots, not the ones that spread fake news or claim compromised accounts.
  - torinmr 9y ago
    It seems like there's an obvious solution to the problem of how to crack down on the types of bot your AI tries to detect, without removing legitimate boots: Give users the ability to designate their account as a self-reported bot. Accounts designated this way would be identified as a bot in the Twitter UI, and would be exempt from captchas.
Balgair 9y ago
> and that Twitter could do it easily if it wanted There's the rub, Twitter doesn't want to do that. Why? Good question, but the WSJ adage applies: Follow the money. I think it's because bots make up most of their users and that getting rid of them is a net negative to them. Not just because they can make stockholders and advertisers think they have more people online than they do. But because trying to continually cull the bots would cost too much as the bot makers up the ante every time. It's not profitable to chase them and it seems that the people that pay Twitter don't care about them. Also, by bot, I do not mean the hydration sensor in your tomato garden or the code that pings your followers to watch you on Twitch. I mean bots that are trying to masquerade as real humans to get you to buys stuff or vote some way or another. Essentially, things making an attempt at the Turing test.
- danudey 9y ago
  When people start flooding off the service and the only people left are nazis and bots, what will their revenue look like then? It'll become the reddit of social media, with small, reasonable groups overshadowed by overwhelmingly toxic, hostile, and destructive forces. How long until their blind eye towards harassment, racism, abuse, and booting collapses any value they have? How long until the average person perceives Twitter as a place where racists congregate and no one else can bring themselves to visit? And when it does, will they pull a reddit and suddenly grow a conscience, miraculously saying "Oh there's a problem on our service and we're going to charge to the rescue!", or are they going to go 4chan and hide behind "freedom of speech" to excuse the filth their platform breeds?
  - rafiki6 9y ago
    Reddit is the reddit of social media...
  - Balgair 9y ago
    > ... going to go 4chan and hide behind "freedom of speech" to excuse the filth their platform breeds? I mean, I don't think 4chan is doing that at all. You give the sons-of-moot too much brainpower. It's a bathroom stall's wall, policing it is silly. That said, when will Twitter crash over the bot stuff? Wall Street doesn't think it will crash, so it won't. When Wall Street thinks it will crash, then it will. However, Twitter is at the foundation of the ad-scam that most of the Big 4 are running. When that goes belly up, Twitter will be along for the ride, but it's more of a Haunted House than a Log-ride. Scary. Again, this is my thought process, who knows.

dmix 9y ago

Having false positives are quite serious though, especially when it comes to shutting accounts down at scale. Sure it works on their small sample test runs, but anyone who's applied these algorithms in real life in an automated fashion understand the risks of false positives is usually far higher in practice. You will basically be put at risk for following 'controversial' accounts on Twitter of having your account delete accidentally. And businesses will have to jump through bureaucratic hoops to use legitimate automated scripts to manage accounts. It also seriously deters anonymous online speech if they force a big percentage of users to provide a unique phone number to prove they aren't a bot (the current Twitter strategy for countering spam). Not to mention the liberal sharing of information with nation states, surreptitiously or otherwise, even for people not trying to be anonymous. A phone number is a critical identifier in the surveillance industry. Getting this accurate is very important and I feel like that is being heavily downplayed in this article.

samastur 9y ago
Twitter already uses automation with false positives. For example get enough followers in short enough amount of time and your account can be taken offline. One of popular ways to using bots as attack weapon these days. No false positives ship has already sailed. What you can best hope now is timely response to mistakes (and as few of them as possible).
lukasschwab 9y ago
Deletion isn't the only option for escalation; Twitter could assemble a risk factor for a given account and opt to present captchas, for example, rather than automatically deleting. Scale captcha frequency with the risk factor. Captchas are certainly not foolproof, but they up the difficulty of running a huge number of phony accounts while having a minimal impact on normal Twitter usage.

apeace 9y ago

I think there is more than one flaw. They started by identifying "left- or right-leaning" tweets. Then they decided that everything in-between were bots. Who decides what is left and what is right, and who decided that anything other than those extremes is "fake news"? There are ethical questions here. It scares me that we now find it acceptable to classify accounts as "bots" or "Russian-backed" because of any content in the tweets, even if it's #LockHerUp or #BuildTheWall. If people really believe these things, shouldn't they be allowed to say them? What if tomorrow, something that you strongly believe in becomes labelled "fake news" or "propaganda", and your own accounts are shut down? The methodology is flawed in the most fundamental way. There are other technologies that can be used for detecting bots[0]. Twitter should use it. [0] https://security.googleblog.com/2014/12/are-you-robot-introducing-no-captcha.html https://security.googleblog.com/2014/12/are-you-robot-introd...

rohanphadte 9y ago
Hey, I'm a creator of the tool written in the article! In our model, we look at hundreds of features per account. Polarizing tweet content is not the only thing the model looks at. If an account is tweeting OC content, it's a clear indication that account is human. Twitter's policy allows bots of their platform, and most are harmless! There are bots that tweet out the upcoming songs on a radio station. Unfortunately, a CAPTCHA would eliminate all bots, not the ones that spread fake news or claim compromised accounts.
- torinmr 9y ago
  It seems like there's an obvious solution to the problem of how to crack down on the types of bot your AI tries to detect, without removing legitimate boots: Give users the ability to designate their account as a self-reported bot. Accounts designated this way would be identified as a bot in the Twitter UI, and would be exempt from captchas.

Balgair 9y ago

> and that Twitter could do it easily if it wanted There's the rub, Twitter doesn't want to do that. Why? Good question, but the WSJ adage applies: Follow the money. I think it's because bots make up most of their users and that getting rid of them is a net negative to them. Not just because they can make stockholders and advertisers think they have more people online than they do. But because trying to continually cull the bots would cost too much as the bot makers up the ante every time. It's not profitable to chase them and it seems that the people that pay Twitter don't care about them. Also, by bot, I do not mean the hydration sensor in your tomato garden or the code that pings your followers to watch you on Twitch. I mean bots that are trying to masquerade as real humans to get you to buys stuff or vote some way or another. Essentially, things making an attempt at the Turing test.

danudey 9y ago
When people start flooding off the service and the only people left are nazis and bots, what will their revenue look like then? It'll become the reddit of social media, with small, reasonable groups overshadowed by overwhelmingly toxic, hostile, and destructive forces. How long until their blind eye towards harassment, racism, abuse, and booting collapses any value they have? How long until the average person perceives Twitter as a place where racists congregate and no one else can bring themselves to visit? And when it does, will they pull a reddit and suddenly grow a conscience, miraculously saying "Oh there's a problem on our service and we're going to charge to the rescue!", or are they going to go 4chan and hide behind "freedom of speech" to excuse the filth their platform breeds?
- rafiki6 9y ago
  Reddit is the reddit of social media...
- Balgair 9y ago
  > ... going to go 4chan and hide behind "freedom of speech" to excuse the filth their platform breeds? I mean, I don't think 4chan is doing that at all. You give the sons-of-moot too much brainpower. It's a bathroom stall's wall, policing it is silly. That said, when will Twitter crash over the bot stuff? Wall Street doesn't think it will crash, so it won't. When Wall Street thinks it will crash, then it will. However, Twitter is at the foundation of the ad-scam that most of the Big 4 are running. When that goes belly up, Twitter will be along for the ride, but it's more of a Haunted House than a Log-ride. Scary. Again, this is my thought process, who knows.