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The profile of fake porn accounts the guy in the first part of the story developed is that they "liked more tweets than they retweeted, had fewer than 1,000 fol

The profile of fake porn accounts the guy in the first part of the story developed is that they "liked more tweets than they retweeted, had fewer than 1,000 followers, and directed readers to click the link in their bios." If that is the only criteria he's using, many legitimate accounts will be falsely accused.

abhishekjha 9y ago
I have an account like that. I just retweet and like stuff sort of like a public bookmarking system. I just go through them when I get enough leisure. I wonder if having a profile photo would help avoiding false positives.
stuartd 9y ago
Well, they're obviously not the only criteria, as the text you mention was immediately preceded by "Not only did these Twitter accounts typically include profile photos of adult actresses, but they also had similar bios, followed similar accounts... "
- downandout 9y ago
  There are many adult actresses, camgirls, etc. on Twitter that are trying to build a following that would still meet this criteria. Not all of them are bots.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 9y ago
    Personally, I don't care whether it's a bot, only that it's spam.
jeffwass 9y ago
I’m a total Twitter n00b. But are we really supposed to retweet more than we like? I was treating retweets as a stronger version of ‘like’, in a sense. Assuming too much retweeting will clog my followers’ feeds, and make them more likely to mute or unfollow me. So yeah, I like far more than I retweet. I also have well less than 1000 followers, being a n00b. I DO have a link in my profile, but don’t actively request people visit. But figure they eventually might (I do much tweeting within the aspiring author community, mentioning my WIP, or Work In Progress, so figure potentially-interested parties could click. But no, not actively marketing, yet...)
- stordoff 9y ago
  > But are we really supposed to retweet more than we like? I was treating retweets as a stronger version of ‘like’ I'm in the same boat, but I'm not sure you could take it any other way. At least in my usage, 'like' is a signal to the poster that I liked their comment/it was a beneficial contribution, whereas 'retweet' is that AND I think it would be useful/interesting to a weirder audience. Retweeting more than likely seems backwards, and more like spam.
- Nition 9y ago
  > Assuming too much retweeting will clog my followers’ feeds. You can choose to mute retweets from an account without muting the whole account, so that's not too much of a problem. If you retweet too much they can mute your retweets. Recently something changed though, and now things you Like can also show up in your friend's feeds, and I haven't found any way on the default twitter site to mute those. So Likes can actually be more spammy than retweets now!
- thaumasiotes 9y ago
  > But are we really supposed to retweet more than we like? HN itself suffers from this problem. There is apparently a heavy "controversial" penalty applied to articles that get too many comments relative to their upvotes. But, commenting is most of HN's functionality. I comment fairly frequently; I certainly don't upvote articles anywhere near as often.
- cookiecaper 9y ago
  > Assuming too much retweeting will clog my followers’ feeds, and make them more likely to mute or unfollow me. If there's one thing I've learned about social media, it's that this totally considerate, natural thought pattern is anathema to the platform vendors. In the real world, you expect a high Signal-to-Noise ratio, and want to reward people who speak less often because their words become more weighty/significant. Social platforms work on the exact inverse of this principle! They reward high Noise-to-Signal accounts because that keeps the psychological engagement hooks going. The platforms actively punish accounts that aren't continuously, repetitively pushing those buttons. If you ever wonder why the spammiest crap floats to the top, this is why. We're all just flashing bulbs in the social media slot machine. If we're not frantically flashing, blinking, or otherwise making it difficult for the consumer-gambler to look away, we're not serving the platform's purpose, and we'll be replaced with a bulb that does.
heavenlyhash 9y ago
We have so many better systems with tons of literature. We -- us, the humans in bulk, as a species with brains -- have so, so many things figured out for this. Googling for "random walk" and "sybil attack" will dump so many solid research papers in our laps it's just a tragedy nobody can be arsed to do something useful.

abhishekjha 9y ago

I have an account like that. I just retweet and like stuff sort of like a public bookmarking system. I just go through them when I get enough leisure. I wonder if having a profile photo would help avoiding false positives.

stuartd 9y ago

Well, they're obviously not the only criteria, as the text you mention was immediately preceded by "Not only did these Twitter accounts typically include profile photos of adult actresses, but they also had similar bios, followed similar accounts... "

downandout 9y ago
There are many adult actresses, camgirls, etc. on Twitter that are trying to build a following that would still meet this criteria. Not all of them are bots.
- yjftsjthsd-h 9y ago
  Personally, I don't care whether it's a bot, only that it's spam.

jeffwass 9y ago

I’m a total Twitter n00b. But are we really supposed to retweet more than we like? I was treating retweets as a stronger version of ‘like’, in a sense. Assuming too much retweeting will clog my followers’ feeds, and make them more likely to mute or unfollow me. So yeah, I like far more than I retweet. I also have well less than 1000 followers, being a n00b. I DO have a link in my profile, but don’t actively request people visit. But figure they eventually might (I do much tweeting within the aspiring author community, mentioning my WIP, or Work In Progress, so figure potentially-interested parties could click. But no, not actively marketing, yet...)

stordoff 9y ago
> But are we really supposed to retweet more than we like? I was treating retweets as a stronger version of ‘like’ I'm in the same boat, but I'm not sure you could take it any other way. At least in my usage, 'like' is a signal to the poster that I liked their comment/it was a beneficial contribution, whereas 'retweet' is that AND I think it would be useful/interesting to a weirder audience. Retweeting more than likely seems backwards, and more like spam.
Nition 9y ago
> Assuming too much retweeting will clog my followers’ feeds. You can choose to mute retweets from an account without muting the whole account, so that's not too much of a problem. If you retweet too much they can mute your retweets. Recently something changed though, and now things you Like can also show up in your friend's feeds, and I haven't found any way on the default twitter site to mute those. So Likes can actually be more spammy than retweets now!
thaumasiotes 9y ago
> But are we really supposed to retweet more than we like? HN itself suffers from this problem. There is apparently a heavy "controversial" penalty applied to articles that get too many comments relative to their upvotes. But, commenting is most of HN's functionality. I comment fairly frequently; I certainly don't upvote articles anywhere near as often.
cookiecaper 9y ago
> Assuming too much retweeting will clog my followers’ feeds, and make them more likely to mute or unfollow me. If there's one thing I've learned about social media, it's that this totally considerate, natural thought pattern is anathema to the platform vendors. In the real world, you expect a high Signal-to-Noise ratio, and want to reward people who speak less often because their words become more weighty/significant. Social platforms work on the exact inverse of this principle! They reward high Noise-to-Signal accounts because that keeps the psychological engagement hooks going. The platforms actively punish accounts that aren't continuously, repetitively pushing those buttons. If you ever wonder why the spammiest crap floats to the top, this is why. We're all just flashing bulbs in the social media slot machine. If we're not frantically flashing, blinking, or otherwise making it difficult for the consumer-gambler to look away, we're not serving the platform's purpose, and we'll be replaced with a bulb that does.

heavenlyhash 9y ago

We have so many better systems with tons of literature. We -- us, the humans in bulk, as a species with brains -- have so, so many things figured out for this. Googling for "random walk" and "sybil attack" will dump so many solid research papers in our laps it's just a tragedy nobody can be arsed to do something useful.