8 ms·

It's so obvious that social platforms with business models based on number of ads/impressions like Twitter/FB are not incentivized enough to remove fake account

by tinbad 9y ago

It's so obvious that social platforms with business models based on number of ads/impressions like Twitter/FB are not incentivized enough to remove fake accounts, yet there seems to be very little public discussion or outrage about it. I agree with Mark Cuban here [1], they should do more to make sure each account has a real user behind it, even if it means less revenue. It's just the right thing to do. [1] https://twitter.com/mcuban/status/957686987229618176 https://twitter.com/mcuban/status/957686987229618176

fortythirteen 9y ago
It's worse than not being incentivized to remove fake accounts - they are _actively_ incentivized to be selective about which fake accounts they "detect". How many of David Brock's bots have been removed from Twitter?
hirundo 9y ago
The only practical way to do that is to take a credit card and run a test transaction against it. If Twitter had tried that it would have died in the nest. People wouldn't take the risk for an unknown benefit. A large portion of their current tweeters still wouldn't, or couldn't provide such proof.
- dawnerd 9y ago
  They just need to actually open up verification to everyone not just saying they are but in reality keeping the same requirements that are so subjective.
- mehrdadn 9y ago
  > The only practical way to do that is to take a credit card and run a test transaction against it. Doesn't really work everywhere in the world.
  - samfriedman 9y ago
    Ah, to solve the social media bot problem, we must first simply uplift the world to a unified economic system.
aaron-lebo 9y ago
Bots will only increase as AI improves, and throwaways are important. They should definitely be honest about their numbers, though.
Nav_Panel 9y ago
Is a brand considered a "real name and real person"?
- will_brown 9y ago
  Yes, at least according to the Supreme Court of The United States.
- metalliqaz 9y ago
  I don't see why not. A brand is owned by a company. That company has a registered name and real people working the social media accounts.
  - scrollaway 9y ago
    Guess we'll have to get rid of those guys then: * https://twitter.com/ReactJS https://twitter.com/ReactJS * https://twitter.com/postgresql https://twitter.com/postgresql * https://twitter.com/officialcatfact https://twitter.com/officialcatfact
    - metalliqaz 9y ago
      Why? Same applies.
      - scrollaway 9y ago
        There is no ReactJS company. There is a company behind ReactJS but that's irrelevant since there's also a company behind those millions of fake users. What about my pet open source projects, shall I shut down their account because they don't have a company backing them?
        scott_s 9y ago
        I think you're arguing a point that no one upthread made. The proposal was to make sure that a real person was behind the account, in good faith - not necessarily that person's personal account. So your accounts and the ones you linked to upthread are fine. The "good faith" part means that there can't be a hard-and-fast rule for which Twitter accounts are okay. Human judgement will be required to sort out good-faith users (including brands or open source projects) from bad-faith users (paying people to run accounts that just inflate other accounts' numbers).
nindalf 9y ago
> .. FB are not incentivized enough to remove fake accounts What makes you think Facebook isn't prioritizing this? I'm not questioning whether you're right about this, just curious about what made you draw this conclusion.
- aaroninsf 9y ago
  Take this hearsay as you like. Someone I am intimate with left Facebook in the last month, in anger at the way senior management up to and including MZ first dismissed the severity of the problem of their platform being used to push propaganda during the election cycle. And then stonewalled and foot dragged efforts to correct this. By the account I got the only incentive for action has been unflattering attention at the national press level. This from someone with a personal relationship with Z. Make of it what you will. The poison is real.
  - vkou 9y ago
    > Someone I am intimate with left Facebook in the last month, in anger at the way senior management up to and including MZ first dismissed the severity of the problem of their platform being used to push propaganda during the election cycle. Intelligent and reasonable people can disagree - strongly as to the extent of how much of a problem this is, whether or not it is a problem, or whether the cure is worse then the disease. This also has little to do with fake user accounts.
  - TheAceOfHearts 9y ago
    Honestly, once you become that rich and powerful, I can imagine it's pretty difficult to not live inside a bubble. They probably don't understand how serious some problems are because they're not normal users. Also, it's probably hard to not let it go to your head and think that you always know what's best for the common rabble.
  - pythonaut_16 9y ago
    Propaganda is separate from fake users though. I haven't seen a claim that fake users played a large role in spreading propaganda or fake news. As far as I understand it the issue lies in what people were sharing and what Facebook identifies as trending news. That's a pretty different issue from Twitters fake accounts.
volkk 9y ago
there seems to be a twitter discussion happening with regards to authoritative/oppressive governments subpoenaing twitter to get a user's identity if that were to happen for voicing an opinion that isn't in line with the regime's. how do you solve this while giving every account an identity?
yourdonut 9y ago
Speaking as an ex-Facebook growth employee, fake accounts actually hurt growth and are actively sought out and removed by a dedicated team. Think about it--if a user receives a bunch of fake friend requests, it's a bad experience. This is one of the (many) reasons MySpace died--because of the onslaught of porn-promoting accounts that they never cleaned up until it was too late.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  Twitter is full of those porn promoting accounts. Typically this is an account with some female name and a profile pic of a person in a state of undress following lots of popular accounts. Twitter doesn't even take them down if you complain about them. Very annoying.
  - scrollaway 9y ago
    Not just porn. My account with ~150 followers was, out of the blue and within a week, followed by a dozen different "startups". Every single one of them follows tens of thousands of people in the hopes of getting followed back. It's pathetic.
    - CPLX 9y ago
      I'm not sure that's quite the same thing. That seems to be an example, at least somewhat, of using the platform as intended. If your profile is public, and they decide to follow it, in part, to make you aware of their existence, perhaps that's a feature not a bug, given that the main use for the thing is to connect with accounts and follow them and discover content.
      - kelnos 9y ago
        I see random accounts occasionally following me, and it's clear that they're just casting a very wide follow net to see who will follow back, presumably to get their readership up. To me, that's spam, no question about it. Even if it's targeted. (Targeted spam is still spam.) I want people to follow me because they're interested in what I post, not because they're looking for me to follow them. Perhaps I'm asking too much of the platform, but... it is what it is.
scrollaway 9y ago
> It's just the right thing to do. That sounds like a sweeping statement with little forethought when you're talking about a platform that enabled protests in dictatorial regimes. Step back here: Fake users, sold by the thousands to give credibility and a megaphone to whoever shells out money: bad. Identity verification: A solution with many consequences to be weighed before jumping on the bandwagon. And dictatures aside, I have no desire to give Twitter my ID or passport.
- intopieces 9y ago
  Enabled protests in dictatorial regimes, sure. But let’s not overstate social media’s positive impact: nearly a decade after the Arab Spring, few governments outside of Tunisia look markedly different. The ability of state actors to use social media to spread propaganda should also be considered in our tally of social media impact. The jury is still out on whether they are a net good.
  - scrollaway 9y ago
    This isn't an argument about whether social media is a net positive. This is about people, and whether Twitter protects its users at risk, or builds a system which just begs for government to request their real names.
    - twinkletwinkle 9y ago
      Would it be possible to do a 1-time verification, and then throw away the data? Twitter needs to see a driver's license or passport once, not keep a scan of it.
      - macintux 9y ago
        That seems fraught with peril also. Does Twitter do any check of the data? If not, you've probably just dramatically expanded the market for fake IDs. If so, can governments monitor such verification attempts and associate them with new accounts? If you're living under a hostile regime would you trust Twitter with your ID regardless of assertions of confidentiality? And there are many people who lack a driver's license and passport. Are they disenfranchised?
wambotron 9y ago
But why does it matter to a general user if there are real or fake users behind twitter accounts? It makes no difference to me whether I have fake followers or not, as I'm not going to be forced to see anything they're posting (or not posting). I can just ignore them and follow who I want. It seems like it only matters from an investment stance.
- kelnos 9y ago
  I care because I get a notification when someone follows me, and I want my notifications to be a source of data with a high SN ratio. I want to notice that a someone has followed me so I can click through and decide if I want to follow back. If it's a bot account, I've just wasted my time, because I never want to follow bots.
roymurdock 9y ago
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." -Upton Sinclair
sneak 9y ago
False dichotomy. Spam and impersonation is bad. Anonymity and pseudonymity and tweet interfaces to bots that provide useful services are all hugely beneficial. Twitter’s main strength is its low barrier to entry, for end users and developers alike.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

by tinbad 9y ago

fortythirteen 9y ago

It's worse than not being incentivized to remove fake accounts - they are _actively_ incentivized to be selective about which fake accounts they "detect". How many of David Brock's bots have been removed from Twitter?

hirundo 9y ago

The only practical way to do that is to take a credit card and run a test transaction against it. If Twitter had tried that it would have died in the nest. People wouldn't take the risk for an unknown benefit. A large portion of their current tweeters still wouldn't, or couldn't provide such proof.

dawnerd 9y ago
They just need to actually open up verification to everyone not just saying they are but in reality keeping the same requirements that are so subjective.
mehrdadn 9y ago
> The only practical way to do that is to take a credit card and run a test transaction against it. Doesn't really work everywhere in the world.
- samfriedman 9y ago
  Ah, to solve the social media bot problem, we must first simply uplift the world to a unified economic system.

aaron-lebo 9y ago

Bots will only increase as AI improves, and throwaways are important. They should definitely be honest about their numbers, though.

Nav_Panel 9y ago

Is a brand considered a "real name and real person"?

will_brown 9y ago
Yes, at least according to the Supreme Court of The United States.
metalliqaz 9y ago
I don't see why not. A brand is owned by a company. That company has a registered name and real people working the social media accounts.
- scrollaway 9y ago
  Guess we'll have to get rid of those guys then: * https://twitter.com/ReactJS https://twitter.com/ReactJS * https://twitter.com/postgresql https://twitter.com/postgresql * https://twitter.com/officialcatfact https://twitter.com/officialcatfact
  - metalliqaz 9y ago
    Why? Same applies.
    - scrollaway 9y ago
      There is no ReactJS company. There is a company behind ReactJS but that's irrelevant since there's also a company behind those millions of fake users. What about my pet open source projects, shall I shut down their account because they don't have a company backing them?
      - scott_s 9y ago
        I think you're arguing a point that no one upthread made. The proposal was to make sure that a real person was behind the account, in good faith - not necessarily that person's personal account. So your accounts and the ones you linked to upthread are fine. The "good faith" part means that there can't be a hard-and-fast rule for which Twitter accounts are okay. Human judgement will be required to sort out good-faith users (including brands or open source projects) from bad-faith users (paying people to run accounts that just inflate other accounts' numbers).

nindalf 9y ago

> .. FB are not incentivized enough to remove fake accounts What makes you think Facebook isn't prioritizing this? I'm not questioning whether you're right about this, just curious about what made you draw this conclusion.

aaroninsf 9y ago
Take this hearsay as you like. Someone I am intimate with left Facebook in the last month, in anger at the way senior management up to and including MZ first dismissed the severity of the problem of their platform being used to push propaganda during the election cycle. And then stonewalled and foot dragged efforts to correct this. By the account I got the only incentive for action has been unflattering attention at the national press level. This from someone with a personal relationship with Z. Make of it what you will. The poison is real.
- vkou 9y ago
  > Someone I am intimate with left Facebook in the last month, in anger at the way senior management up to and including MZ first dismissed the severity of the problem of their platform being used to push propaganda during the election cycle. Intelligent and reasonable people can disagree - strongly as to the extent of how much of a problem this is, whether or not it is a problem, or whether the cure is worse then the disease. This also has little to do with fake user accounts.
- TheAceOfHearts 9y ago
  Honestly, once you become that rich and powerful, I can imagine it's pretty difficult to not live inside a bubble. They probably don't understand how serious some problems are because they're not normal users. Also, it's probably hard to not let it go to your head and think that you always know what's best for the common rabble.
- pythonaut_16 9y ago
  Propaganda is separate from fake users though. I haven't seen a claim that fake users played a large role in spreading propaganda or fake news. As far as I understand it the issue lies in what people were sharing and what Facebook identifies as trending news. That's a pretty different issue from Twitters fake accounts.

volkk 9y ago

there seems to be a twitter discussion happening with regards to authoritative/oppressive governments subpoenaing twitter to get a user's identity if that were to happen for voicing an opinion that isn't in line with the regime's. how do you solve this while giving every account an identity?

yourdonut 9y ago

Speaking as an ex-Facebook growth employee, fake accounts actually hurt growth and are actively sought out and removed by a dedicated team. Think about it--if a user receives a bunch of fake friend requests, it's a bad experience. This is one of the (many) reasons MySpace died--because of the onslaught of porn-promoting accounts that they never cleaned up until it was too late.

jacquesm 9y ago
Twitter is full of those porn promoting accounts. Typically this is an account with some female name and a profile pic of a person in a state of undress following lots of popular accounts. Twitter doesn't even take them down if you complain about them. Very annoying.
- scrollaway 9y ago
  Not just porn. My account with ~150 followers was, out of the blue and within a week, followed by a dozen different "startups". Every single one of them follows tens of thousands of people in the hopes of getting followed back. It's pathetic.
  - CPLX 9y ago
    I'm not sure that's quite the same thing. That seems to be an example, at least somewhat, of using the platform as intended. If your profile is public, and they decide to follow it, in part, to make you aware of their existence, perhaps that's a feature not a bug, given that the main use for the thing is to connect with accounts and follow them and discover content.
    - kelnos 9y ago
      I see random accounts occasionally following me, and it's clear that they're just casting a very wide follow net to see who will follow back, presumably to get their readership up. To me, that's spam, no question about it. Even if it's targeted. (Targeted spam is still spam.) I want people to follow me because they're interested in what I post, not because they're looking for me to follow them. Perhaps I'm asking too much of the platform, but... it is what it is.

scrollaway 9y ago

> It's just the right thing to do. That sounds like a sweeping statement with little forethought when you're talking about a platform that enabled protests in dictatorial regimes. Step back here: Fake users, sold by the thousands to give credibility and a megaphone to whoever shells out money: bad. Identity verification: A solution with many consequences to be weighed before jumping on the bandwagon. And dictatures aside, I have no desire to give Twitter my ID or passport.

intopieces 9y ago
Enabled protests in dictatorial regimes, sure. But let’s not overstate social media’s positive impact: nearly a decade after the Arab Spring, few governments outside of Tunisia look markedly different. The ability of state actors to use social media to spread propaganda should also be considered in our tally of social media impact. The jury is still out on whether they are a net good.
- scrollaway 9y ago
  This isn't an argument about whether social media is a net positive. This is about people, and whether Twitter protects its users at risk, or builds a system which just begs for government to request their real names.
  - twinkletwinkle 9y ago
    Would it be possible to do a 1-time verification, and then throw away the data? Twitter needs to see a driver's license or passport once, not keep a scan of it.
    - macintux 9y ago
      That seems fraught with peril also. Does Twitter do any check of the data? If not, you've probably just dramatically expanded the market for fake IDs. If so, can governments monitor such verification attempts and associate them with new accounts? If you're living under a hostile regime would you trust Twitter with your ID regardless of assertions of confidentiality? And there are many people who lack a driver's license and passport. Are they disenfranchised?

wambotron 9y ago

But why does it matter to a general user if there are real or fake users behind twitter accounts? It makes no difference to me whether I have fake followers or not, as I'm not going to be forced to see anything they're posting (or not posting). I can just ignore them and follow who I want. It seems like it only matters from an investment stance.

kelnos 9y ago
I care because I get a notification when someone follows me, and I want my notifications to be a source of data with a high SN ratio. I want to notice that a someone has followed me so I can click through and decide if I want to follow back. If it's a bot account, I've just wasted my time, because I never want to follow bots.

roymurdock 9y ago

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." -Upton Sinclair

sneak 9y ago

False dichotomy. Spam and impersonation is bad. Anonymity and pseudonymity and tweet interfaces to bots that provide useful services are all hugely beneficial. Twitter’s main strength is its low barrier to entry, for end users and developers alike.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]