4 ms·

It's amazing to me how researchers spend a day or two looking into something and come away with tens of thousands of bots, in this case some that are nearly a d

It's amazing to me how researchers spend a day or two looking into something and come away with tens of thousands of bots, in this case some that are nearly a decade old. Seems like Twitter can't be looking that hard, though it's far from a simple task and it's probably all they can do to stem the tide of new bots day by day.

dawnerd 9y ago
Twitter has a hard time dealing with the fake Elon Musk bots that post ethereum scams. I've reported way more than I can count and so far only a fraction have been banned. It's amazing how bad twitter is at filtering very obvious spam.
- B1FF_PSUVM 9y ago
  mumble ... (Twitter's) "salary depends on not understanding it" ... smh
acdha 9y ago
It's really hard to escape the cynical conclusion that for years they've been trying to ignore anything which would lower engagement metrics.
rhema 9y ago
Even with a 95% accuracy of detection, a good algorithm can point the "is a bot" finger wrongly at many people. If 10,000 bots are detected and banned, it could upset 500 real people. So, Twitter has to ask if its easier to put up with 9,500 not-so-active bots, or to potentially make 500 people very upset.
- hyperpape 9y ago
  They apparently delete hundreds of thousands of accounts every day: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16248845 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16248845.
- aylmao 9y ago
  As far as I like to believe this is the reason behind this, I can't but assume this is a very simplistic view of the situation. I'm sure if they wanted they could do a better job verifying against bots; they don't have to instantly ban. They could instead require users to solve some captchas, submit some form of official verification, etc.
- TehCorwiz 9y ago
  It feels like the solution is some version of person-hood verification. Back in that day my brother and I both played on various MUDs (multi-user-dungeon/dimension). At the time most people had dial-up, due to my father's business we had an ISDN line and multiple computers, to prevent bots they made the assumption that multiple logins from the same IP were bots. So to combat this without blanket bans, the mods would warp us into a private area and have us type a different list of things simultaneously to satisfy themselves that we were actual people. It was a low-tech solution to a low-volume problem in a low-user-count game. However, something similar like making the user do a captcha on each login or post if they're suspected of being a bot would be a low bar for a human to cross, but someone running a bot network would probably have to invest some time or resources into overcoming the captcha. (Mechanical Turk, machine learning, captcha farm, etc.)
  - doorbumper 9y ago
    The idea that real users will only be slightly inconvenienced is something I see often. However, that imposes real costs. A significant percentage of those users will not be determined enough to solve a captcha every time they login, and their usage will drop off. It's the reason I will never use CloudFlare for any product I build. Their DDOS and spam protection does protect you, but it also literally drives away users. The question Twitter should be asking is not, "Which accounts are bots?". That would just be bad business. Instead, they should be asking at what point does the presence of bots hurt the user experience more than imposing barriers on usage.
- notahacker 9y ago
  And academic and journalistic investigations into political bots have often subsequently discovered that a non-trivial proportion of apparent bot accounts are actually manned by ordinary people who genuinely feel retweeting certain influencers for hours on end and indiscriminately replying to other political figures with memes and slogans was a good use of their time in election cycles. It's Human Turing Test Failure central.
  - andrewbinstock 9y ago
    Any source for this? Not disputing it, but would like to see some evidence.
    - jandrese 9y ago
      Wasn't there a mass bot purge a couple of weeks ago immediately followed by complaints that Twitter was silencing important conservative voices because they're part of the Deep State?
      - bdcravens 9y ago
        I believe the complaint was reduced follower counts reduced credibility of some real accounts
    - ATsch 9y ago
      the 34c3 talk "social bots, fake news and filterbubbles" comes to mind (unfortunately originally in German) The tl;dw of this is that when defining "bots", most researchers used very misleading metrics e.g. ">20 tweets/day" and the worries and studies about "social bots" shaping discussion on twitter are generally not founded in reality. https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-9268-social_bots_fake_news_und_filterblasen https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-9268-social_bots_fake_news_und_f...
  - DyslexicAtheist 9y ago
    >> retweeting certain influencers for hours on end and indiscriminately replying to other political figures with memes and slogans My twitter feed has became much more civilized after muting retweets[1] from anyone I follow. This leaves only genuine comments & discussions. I can again focus on what people are saying and toxic accounts that previously slipped through in the noise become visible allowing me to weed them out. [1] https://medium.com/@Luca/how-to-turn-off-retweets-for-everyone-99dd835c10f8 https://medium.com/@Luca/how-to-turn-off-retweets-for-everyo...
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- mschuster91 9y ago
  > So, Twitter has to ask if its easier to put up with 9,500 not-so-active bots, or to potentially make 500 people very upset. The latter wouldn't be such a problem if they had an established, WORKING process for appeals. Or to get in contact with a human at all. As for the spambots: ignore them, they don't do much besides luring morons to porn sites. The Nazis and other similar trolls are vastly more dangerous for Twitter and for societies.
jellicle 9y ago
Hard to get a man to find a bot when his job depends on his not finding it.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
everdev 9y ago
If you get paid to drive user growth are you really going to stiffle it? Those accounts and their interactions get wrapped up into overall stats presented to investors. They're not going to clamp down too hard on bot traffic as it's inflating their actual user base and interactions. As a content company blinded by growth stats, I'd want bots craving out content on my platform too as long as it was legible. As someone trying to build a quality platform, I wouldn't want them on there or would at least want them marked with a robot icon. Which side do you think Twitter is on?
wpietri 9y ago
I think the thing they care about is not total number of bot accounts, but total amount users are bothered by bots. I agree that they could do a lot better, but there's something to be said for letting sleeping bots lie. In particular, it's important not to feed an adversary's OODA loop. If you kill bot accounts immediately upon detection, you give them information about what you can detect. That encourages them to create things you can't detect. Better to wait until the network becomes a problem and then roll up the whole thing at once. That tells them a lot less about how they got caught, and burns more of their work for the information you do give up.

dawnerd 9y ago

Twitter has a hard time dealing with the fake Elon Musk bots that post ethereum scams. I've reported way more than I can count and so far only a fraction have been banned. It's amazing how bad twitter is at filtering very obvious spam.

B1FF_PSUVM 9y ago
mumble ... (Twitter's) "salary depends on not understanding it" ... smh

acdha 9y ago

It's really hard to escape the cynical conclusion that for years they've been trying to ignore anything which would lower engagement metrics.

rhema 9y ago

Even with a 95% accuracy of detection, a good algorithm can point the "is a bot" finger wrongly at many people. If 10,000 bots are detected and banned, it could upset 500 real people. So, Twitter has to ask if its easier to put up with 9,500 not-so-active bots, or to potentially make 500 people very upset.

hyperpape 9y ago
They apparently delete hundreds of thousands of accounts every day: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16248845 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16248845.
aylmao 9y ago
As far as I like to believe this is the reason behind this, I can't but assume this is a very simplistic view of the situation. I'm sure if they wanted they could do a better job verifying against bots; they don't have to instantly ban. They could instead require users to solve some captchas, submit some form of official verification, etc.
TehCorwiz 9y ago
It feels like the solution is some version of person-hood verification. Back in that day my brother and I both played on various MUDs (multi-user-dungeon/dimension). At the time most people had dial-up, due to my father's business we had an ISDN line and multiple computers, to prevent bots they made the assumption that multiple logins from the same IP were bots. So to combat this without blanket bans, the mods would warp us into a private area and have us type a different list of things simultaneously to satisfy themselves that we were actual people. It was a low-tech solution to a low-volume problem in a low-user-count game. However, something similar like making the user do a captcha on each login or post if they're suspected of being a bot would be a low bar for a human to cross, but someone running a bot network would probably have to invest some time or resources into overcoming the captcha. (Mechanical Turk, machine learning, captcha farm, etc.)
- doorbumper 9y ago
  The idea that real users will only be slightly inconvenienced is something I see often. However, that imposes real costs. A significant percentage of those users will not be determined enough to solve a captcha every time they login, and their usage will drop off. It's the reason I will never use CloudFlare for any product I build. Their DDOS and spam protection does protect you, but it also literally drives away users. The question Twitter should be asking is not, "Which accounts are bots?". That would just be bad business. Instead, they should be asking at what point does the presence of bots hurt the user experience more than imposing barriers on usage.
notahacker 9y ago
And academic and journalistic investigations into political bots have often subsequently discovered that a non-trivial proportion of apparent bot accounts are actually manned by ordinary people who genuinely feel retweeting certain influencers for hours on end and indiscriminately replying to other political figures with memes and slogans was a good use of their time in election cycles. It's Human Turing Test Failure central.
- andrewbinstock 9y ago
  Any source for this? Not disputing it, but would like to see some evidence.
  - jandrese 9y ago
    Wasn't there a mass bot purge a couple of weeks ago immediately followed by complaints that Twitter was silencing important conservative voices because they're part of the Deep State?
    - bdcravens 9y ago
      I believe the complaint was reduced follower counts reduced credibility of some real accounts
  - ATsch 9y ago
    the 34c3 talk "social bots, fake news and filterbubbles" comes to mind (unfortunately originally in German) The tl;dw of this is that when defining "bots", most researchers used very misleading metrics e.g. ">20 tweets/day" and the worries and studies about "social bots" shaping discussion on twitter are generally not founded in reality. https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-9268-social_bots_fake_news_und_filterblasen https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-9268-social_bots_fake_news_und_f...
- DyslexicAtheist 9y ago
  >> retweeting certain influencers for hours on end and indiscriminately replying to other political figures with memes and slogans My twitter feed has became much more civilized after muting retweets[1] from anyone I follow. This leaves only genuine comments & discussions. I can again focus on what people are saying and toxic accounts that previously slipped through in the noise become visible allowing me to weed them out. [1] https://medium.com/@Luca/how-to-turn-off-retweets-for-everyone-99dd835c10f8 https://medium.com/@Luca/how-to-turn-off-retweets-for-everyo...
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
mschuster91 9y ago
> So, Twitter has to ask if its easier to put up with 9,500 not-so-active bots, or to potentially make 500 people very upset. The latter wouldn't be such a problem if they had an established, WORKING process for appeals. Or to get in contact with a human at all. As for the spambots: ignore them, they don't do much besides luring morons to porn sites. The Nazis and other similar trolls are vastly more dangerous for Twitter and for societies.

jellicle 9y ago

Hard to get a man to find a bot when his job depends on his not finding it.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

everdev 9y ago

If you get paid to drive user growth are you really going to stiffle it? Those accounts and their interactions get wrapped up into overall stats presented to investors. They're not going to clamp down too hard on bot traffic as it's inflating their actual user base and interactions. As a content company blinded by growth stats, I'd want bots craving out content on my platform too as long as it was legible. As someone trying to build a quality platform, I wouldn't want them on there or would at least want them marked with a robot icon. Which side do you think Twitter is on?

wpietri 9y ago

I think the thing they care about is not total number of bot accounts, but total amount users are bothered by bots. I agree that they could do a lot better, but there's something to be said for letting sleeping bots lie. In particular, it's important not to feed an adversary's OODA loop. If you kill bot accounts immediately upon detection, you give them information about what you can detect. That encourages them to create things you can't detect. Better to wait until the network becomes a problem and then roll up the whole thing at once. That tells them a lot less about how they got caught, and burns more of their work for the information you do give up.