4 ms·

Is there any specific reason you said hundreds of thousands of accounts, and not tens of thousands, millions, or dozens?

cryptoz 9y ago
Just an order of magnitude guess. It could be tens of thousands, it could be millions, I'm just an outsider looking in. But it seems clear that it is at least a couple orders of magnitude more than just the 70 they found and publicized so far.
- patrickaljord 9y ago
  This is not how it works. The goal of these accounts was to build a following to be able to influence more people. A page with a couple of hundreds likes or followers will have much more impact than a million accounts with no followers. Building audiences to influence people is hard and takes time. It is much more probable that there are around 70 accounts than millions. Sorry to be that blunt but do you know anything about this matter?
  - cryptoz 9y ago
    Well that's rude. > The goal of these accounts was to build a following to be able to influence more people. A page with a couple of hundreds likes or followers will have much more impact than a million accounts with no followers. Of course. I do not mean to suggest that every single account that the Russians created was a success or has millions of followers. I am positing that they likely created many many accounts, and I would presume many of those accounts gained few followers and exerted little influence (edit: although, some influence is some influence; even 1 follower can be meaningful). > It is much more probable that there are around 70 accounts than millions. I disagree - I think it is much more probable that there are hundreds of thousands of accounts. I certainly don't think there would be millions (who brought that up anyway? wasn't me) as that seems too high to be real. It's just a guess, though. > Sorry to be that blunt but do you know anything about this matter? Yes, I do. You're not being blunt, you're being rude.
  - wjn0 9y ago
    Do you know anything about this matter? The scope of this is still largely unknown, unless you have some information the rest of us don't. Influence can be local. Generic-looking pages (i.e. not locale specific in the content they post) or accounts are often followed by people only from a specific small city and surrounding areas (10^4 people, say). Is it so hard to believe that accounts such as these were used by the IRA?
    - AnimalMuppet 9y ago
      It seems to me intuitively obvious that an account with 10^4 followers has less influence than an account with 10^7 followers. (Sure, if you have 1000 accounts with 10^4 followers, it adds up...) Removing the big accounts (probably) isn't going to remove the IRA's presence on Facebook. It's going to take a big chunk out of their influence, though. (Unless they have other accounts with big followings that weren't removed.)
      - bitumen 9y ago
        You know the old saw, “quantity has a quality all of its own.” I’d add that these guys could have done both. They could have high follower count identities, medium, and low. They can have highly active accounts, and “sleepers” and everything in between. It would be unwise to make too many assumptions based on limited press releases from Facebook. It’s more sensible to think about what they could have done, and then move on from there. They could have had tiers of accounts, all for different purposes. They could have used a ton of low accounts to simulate a grassroots response, to openly troll and be banned, and all kinds of things. They’d have cultivated more and less popular, and obvious accounts as well. If they were smart they’d have a whole layer of accounts designed just to be caught, and give a misleading impression of their competence and methodology.
        wjn0 9y ago
        You expressed my thoughts better than I could. I'm looking forward to more analysis being done on the actions of IRA - I just hope FB/Twitter/others don't sweep what was done beyond these big accounts under the rug, because we're only going to see more of this sort of "information warfare."
  - qaq 9y ago
    They have different types of accounts for different purposes some are just used to comment or authenticate to 3d party sites and to comment there. They also serve as feeder accounts for the "core" accounts that are actually trying to build up followers.
StanislavPetrov 9y ago
How dare you dismiss the possibility that there are billions or trillions of Russian accounts? Clearly you underestimate the limitless power of arch-villain Putin.

cryptoz 9y ago

Just an order of magnitude guess. It could be tens of thousands, it could be millions, I'm just an outsider looking in. But it seems clear that it is at least a couple orders of magnitude more than just the 70 they found and publicized so far.

patrickaljord 9y ago
This is not how it works. The goal of these accounts was to build a following to be able to influence more people. A page with a couple of hundreds likes or followers will have much more impact than a million accounts with no followers. Building audiences to influence people is hard and takes time. It is much more probable that there are around 70 accounts than millions. Sorry to be that blunt but do you know anything about this matter?
- cryptoz 9y ago
  Well that's rude. > The goal of these accounts was to build a following to be able to influence more people. A page with a couple of hundreds likes or followers will have much more impact than a million accounts with no followers. Of course. I do not mean to suggest that every single account that the Russians created was a success or has millions of followers. I am positing that they likely created many many accounts, and I would presume many of those accounts gained few followers and exerted little influence (edit: although, some influence is some influence; even 1 follower can be meaningful). > It is much more probable that there are around 70 accounts than millions. I disagree - I think it is much more probable that there are hundreds of thousands of accounts. I certainly don't think there would be millions (who brought that up anyway? wasn't me) as that seems too high to be real. It's just a guess, though. > Sorry to be that blunt but do you know anything about this matter? Yes, I do. You're not being blunt, you're being rude.
- wjn0 9y ago
  Do you know anything about this matter? The scope of this is still largely unknown, unless you have some information the rest of us don't. Influence can be local. Generic-looking pages (i.e. not locale specific in the content they post) or accounts are often followed by people only from a specific small city and surrounding areas (10^4 people, say). Is it so hard to believe that accounts such as these were used by the IRA?
  - AnimalMuppet 9y ago
    It seems to me intuitively obvious that an account with 10^4 followers has less influence than an account with 10^7 followers. (Sure, if you have 1000 accounts with 10^4 followers, it adds up...) Removing the big accounts (probably) isn't going to remove the IRA's presence on Facebook. It's going to take a big chunk out of their influence, though. (Unless they have other accounts with big followings that weren't removed.)
    - bitumen 9y ago
      You know the old saw, “quantity has a quality all of its own.” I’d add that these guys could have done both. They could have high follower count identities, medium, and low. They can have highly active accounts, and “sleepers” and everything in between. It would be unwise to make too many assumptions based on limited press releases from Facebook. It’s more sensible to think about what they could have done, and then move on from there. They could have had tiers of accounts, all for different purposes. They could have used a ton of low accounts to simulate a grassroots response, to openly troll and be banned, and all kinds of things. They’d have cultivated more and less popular, and obvious accounts as well. If they were smart they’d have a whole layer of accounts designed just to be caught, and give a misleading impression of their competence and methodology.
      - wjn0 9y ago
        You expressed my thoughts better than I could. I'm looking forward to more analysis being done on the actions of IRA - I just hope FB/Twitter/others don't sweep what was done beyond these big accounts under the rug, because we're only going to see more of this sort of "information warfare."
- qaq 9y ago
  They have different types of accounts for different purposes some are just used to comment or authenticate to 3d party sites and to comment there. They also serve as feeder accounts for the "core" accounts that are actually trying to build up followers.

StanislavPetrov 9y ago

How dare you dismiss the possibility that there are billions or trillions of Russian accounts? Clearly you underestimate the limitless power of arch-villain Putin.