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I got fed up with Twitter's lack of enthusiasm in blocking these accounts so I whipped up a quick proof of concept a while ago. The amount of trivial-to-detect

I got fed up with Twitter's lack of enthusiasm in blocking these accounts so I whipped up a quick proof of concept a while ago. The amount of trivial-to-detect cryptocurrency scams in replies to popular accounts was so high that I put together a hacky PoC: https://gist.github.com/lorenzhs/864353c202112a38de17ed054f31e67c https://gist.github.com/lorenzhs/864353c202112a38de17ed054f3... -- the scammers' messages have changed now, the messages no longer match that particular filter, but it worked for weeks without Twitter doing anything.

1337biz 9y ago
Are you aware that many ICOs give free torkens to people who share a specific tweet or tweet a specific url?
- donarb 9y ago
  I would say that conversations that need an incentive to retweet are worthless.
- lazugod 9y ago
  Is this a reason to not block them?
  - ianai 9y ago
    Sounds like a great reason to block them. Can we just shut down twitter already? It seems like something made for marketing purposes that was pushed on people and wound up harmful. (Granted, that’s not practical.)
    - beedogs 9y ago
      I'd be happy with that if we also got rid of Facebook and Reddit.
      - Cyph0n 9y ago
        What's wrong with Reddit? If you're talking about the "default" config, then yes, it sucks. But if you curate the subreddits you follow, you can end up with a news aggregator that is superior to HN... Furthermore, the more specific the subreddit, the more in depth the discussions become.
        scottmf 9y ago
        You could say the same about Twitter and Facebook.
        Cyph0n 9y ago
        Twitter is not an effective discussion platform imo. Facebook, in my experience at least, makes it pretty damned hard to find active, technical communities.
        jdminhbg 9y ago
        > Twitter is not an effective discussion platform imo. It doesn't need to be effective for discussion to be valuable. It can be an effective broadcast platform, or research platform, or...
        beedogs 9y ago
        The problem with Reddit is that it's full of white supremacists who migrated over from /pol/ in 2016 and took up residence. The admins have been aware of the problem for two years but haven't cared enough to do anything about it.
    - jpindar 9y ago
      Why can't you just not use Twitter, and leave it to those of us who like it?
      - ianai 9y ago
        Because we tried that to disasterous results.
        deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
    - chrononaut 9y ago
      While there are issues with Twitter not doing enough to ban bots, the platform is a festinating example of the complexity of balancing free speech and censorship.
bigiain 9y ago
I got fed up with Twitter's lack of enthusiasm in blocking all sorts of shitposts that I stopped using it. I've been significantly less angry ever since...
- justAnotherNET 9y ago
  This. They clearly don’t care about keeping their platform authentic so stop using it. Reddit is also getting worse and worse in this reguard by the month it seems.
- aaachilless 9y ago
  Is it for some reason not a viable solution to just stop following people who shitpost? Or does Twitter push random users' posts at you? I ask because I've been circling around Twitter for a month or so, but if you can't isolate yourself from public tweets, I'm definitely not going to jump in.
  - cicero 9y ago
    It is certainly viable. I follow an interesting group of users and unfollow anyone who becomes problematic. There are some "Promoted" tweets that are essentially ads, but they are easy to ignore if not interesting.
    - Thlom 9y ago
      I don't think I see any ads using Tweetbot. I may also miss some features, but don't really care about that. I like that my Twitter feed is just a stream of tweets.
    - gideonparanoid 9y ago
      I've found that with blocking every account I see a promoted tweet from, I barely see any any more.
  - stryk 9y ago
    If I may make a suggestion, and I'm not sure what your use-case plans are for it -- maybe this isn't feasible for you, but if you absolutely MUST use Twitter, do not install it on your phone. Keep it to just the desktop website version. My reasons for suggesting this are three-fold: 1) Twitter at it's core is, IMO, nothing but a distraction. You will be less productive and less interactive with real people in real life. 2) The Internet Fuckwad Theory is in full effect in the Twitter-verse at all times. Depending on your personality, it may very well make you more depressed/mad/whatever -- it's not going to change your daily life for the better at any rate. 3) Twitter tracks you & harvests your data, and if you install it on your phone they will have much more data about/from you -- and we (as in, everyone on the planet) do not need any more tracking/spying/snooping/etc.
sat_nam 9y ago
This is a great effort. I wrote about this at the end of January (https://research.satnam.co/2018/01/30/scammers-impersonating-cryptocurrency-industry-figures-in-effort-to-steal-tokens/ https://research.satnam.co/2018/01/30/scammers-impersonating...) and was working on a script last month that did the same thing but I was searching the Streaming API for specific keywords that I knew were triggers for their tweets. I set-up a Twitter account to also identify and report these scammers accounts. The problem I was having was I did not account for the variety of currencies that were being utilized, so I had to write new regexes for the different address types. By then, they had switched up tactics and I hadn't followed up on it since.

1337biz 9y ago

Are you aware that many ICOs give free torkens to people who share a specific tweet or tweet a specific url?

donarb 9y ago
I would say that conversations that need an incentive to retweet are worthless.
lazugod 9y ago
Is this a reason to not block them?
- ianai 9y ago
  Sounds like a great reason to block them. Can we just shut down twitter already? It seems like something made for marketing purposes that was pushed on people and wound up harmful. (Granted, that’s not practical.)
  - beedogs 9y ago
    I'd be happy with that if we also got rid of Facebook and Reddit.
    - Cyph0n 9y ago
      What's wrong with Reddit? If you're talking about the "default" config, then yes, it sucks. But if you curate the subreddits you follow, you can end up with a news aggregator that is superior to HN... Furthermore, the more specific the subreddit, the more in depth the discussions become.
      - scottmf 9y ago
        You could say the same about Twitter and Facebook.
        Cyph0n 9y ago
        Twitter is not an effective discussion platform imo. Facebook, in my experience at least, makes it pretty damned hard to find active, technical communities.
        jdminhbg 9y ago
        > Twitter is not an effective discussion platform imo. It doesn't need to be effective for discussion to be valuable. It can be an effective broadcast platform, or research platform, or...
      - beedogs 9y ago
        The problem with Reddit is that it's full of white supremacists who migrated over from /pol/ in 2016 and took up residence. The admins have been aware of the problem for two years but haven't cared enough to do anything about it.
  - jpindar 9y ago
    Why can't you just not use Twitter, and leave it to those of us who like it?
    - ianai 9y ago
      Because we tried that to disasterous results.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
  - chrononaut 9y ago
    While there are issues with Twitter not doing enough to ban bots, the platform is a festinating example of the complexity of balancing free speech and censorship.

bigiain 9y ago

I got fed up with Twitter's lack of enthusiasm in blocking all sorts of shitposts that I stopped using it. I've been significantly less angry ever since...

justAnotherNET 9y ago
This. They clearly don’t care about keeping their platform authentic so stop using it. Reddit is also getting worse and worse in this reguard by the month it seems.
aaachilless 9y ago
Is it for some reason not a viable solution to just stop following people who shitpost? Or does Twitter push random users' posts at you? I ask because I've been circling around Twitter for a month or so, but if you can't isolate yourself from public tweets, I'm definitely not going to jump in.
- cicero 9y ago
  It is certainly viable. I follow an interesting group of users and unfollow anyone who becomes problematic. There are some "Promoted" tweets that are essentially ads, but they are easy to ignore if not interesting.
  - Thlom 9y ago
    I don't think I see any ads using Tweetbot. I may also miss some features, but don't really care about that. I like that my Twitter feed is just a stream of tweets.
  - gideonparanoid 9y ago
    I've found that with blocking every account I see a promoted tweet from, I barely see any any more.
- stryk 9y ago
  If I may make a suggestion, and I'm not sure what your use-case plans are for it -- maybe this isn't feasible for you, but if you absolutely MUST use Twitter, do not install it on your phone. Keep it to just the desktop website version. My reasons for suggesting this are three-fold: 1) Twitter at it's core is, IMO, nothing but a distraction. You will be less productive and less interactive with real people in real life. 2) The Internet Fuckwad Theory is in full effect in the Twitter-verse at all times. Depending on your personality, it may very well make you more depressed/mad/whatever -- it's not going to change your daily life for the better at any rate. 3) Twitter tracks you & harvests your data, and if you install it on your phone they will have much more data about/from you -- and we (as in, everyone on the planet) do not need any more tracking/spying/snooping/etc.

sat_nam 9y ago

This is a great effort. I wrote about this at the end of January (https://research.satnam.co/2018/01/30/scammers-impersonating-cryptocurrency-industry-figures-in-effort-to-steal-tokens/ https://research.satnam.co/2018/01/30/scammers-impersonating...) and was working on a script last month that did the same thing but I was searching the Streaming API for specific keywords that I knew were triggers for their tweets. I set-up a Twitter account to also identify and report these scammers accounts. The problem I was having was I did not account for the variety of currencies that were being utilized, so I had to write new regexes for the different address types. By then, they had switched up tactics and I hadn't followed up on it since.