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Signs you're following a fake Twitter account
- Hesavard 7y agoTwitter does absolutely nothing to exterminate old fake accounts. Probably because the last time they did so and saw how many real accounts there were, Twitter's stocks plummetted down
- ewfwfewefewfwef 7y agoI think it was in a video with to mscott where woman from twitter talked about this, yes false positives are a big problem when detecting fakes. But Twitter is working hard to keep bad bots / fake accounts away. There was no last time, right now people are working on banning fakes. It a 24/7 game.
- non-entity 7y agoEasiest way I've found to spot bots on Twitter is username patterns where both the handle and display name are similar or the same with 1 or 2 words (often a first and last name) and a random number. For example JohnDoe127474. For a more realistic example: I just went to the first trending semi-poltical topic and this was the first bottish account I found (the tweet itself is pretty benign): https://twitter.com/Elsie43733196/status/1235724530716377088?s=19 https://twitter.com/Elsie43733196/status/1235724530716377088...
- ceejayoz 7y agoIt's such an oddly obvious tell. I'm left wondering if it's like the advance fee scams; making it blindly obvious means you only attract the truly gullible, limiting the amount of skeptical followers who'd reply publicly to your bullshit tweets.
- knzhou 7y agoIt's the default username style.
- tomatotomato37 7y agoTalking semi-seriously here, but I wonder if the next evolution in bot accounts would be using name and avatars generated from KnowYourMeme content in order to defeat casual verification
- learnstats2 7y agoThis is the automated handle style that Twitter gives you if you don't specify or if your first choice is not available and you click through without realising this. So that can also apply to naïve users.
- dhosek 7y agoThere's one real person in my Twitter environment (I don't follow him, but we follow and interact with a lot of the same people so the algorithm shows me his tweets a fair amount) who has a handle something like John415141. I think he chose that handle ironically.
- Spooky23 7y agoIt's the same problem EBay had 20 years ago. User growth is always a KPI that people care about, so there's a bias to not get aggressive about purging fake accounts. Being aggressive will also flag unsophisticated real people as well.
- lukey_q 7y agoI'm curious what you think makes this particular account a bot? To me it looks like someone who might not be particularly tech savvy who signed up for Twitter to find out about and discuss the ongoing global pandemic, which I guess you could call a "semi-political topic". To me it looks like Twitter's attempts to reach out to people who aren't already constantly online might occasionally work, which could result in a screen name or behavior that seems "strange" to people who are already very familiar with the platform
- faiz7412 7y agoI'm now wondering if people would think my twitter profile is a bot and report me because the handle has numbers representing my name in leetcode.
- vangelis 7y agoCongrats, you've found someone who accepted the autogenerated username!
- brewdad 7y agoIs someone who accepts to automated username likely to be contributing anything of value? Human or bot, block and move on seems the best strategy.
- catalogia 7y agoMost of the "normal" people I know IRL have usernames like that.
- Zigurd 7y agoThere is a general problem with platforms and fake entities of various kinds posing as friendly, relatable individuals. This problem surfaces far less deeply than you have to dig to find a well-crafted fake portrait. Is that really a crafty artistic person turning out handmade items on Etsy, or is it a front for a factory in China with dozens of pseudonymous identities on Etsy? They take on multiple fake identities in order to appear to be humans handcrafting their items in small batches. If one identity gets their cover blown, it is shut down and replaced. Is your AirBnB host with a woman's first name really renting out some family-owned cottages, or is "she" a BPO messaging contact center who won't talk to you on the phone? AirBnB's UI makes you sift through tens of pages of reviews to glean hints. And that usually happens after you have suspicions due to a foulup with a rental. I haven't yet tried one of those "sharing economy" car rentals. But I suspect they, too, have attracted aggregators posing behind multiple fake identities to escape bad reputations if need be. Social media and all kinds of other platforms need to look for and mitigate damage to their brands from fake identities. These fakes are made, in part, to game the platforms, and, in doing so, reduce their value.
- vertis 7y agoEtsy does take their identity verification for sellers fairly seriously, though it's hard to combat if you have a workforce of people whose ID you can use.
- strbean 7y ago> Is that really a crafty artistic person turning out handmade items on Etsy, or is it a front for a factory in China with dozens of pseudonymous identities on Etsy? Ran into this when my fiancé was browsing Etsy to get an idea of how to price some of her stained glass work. There was a particular listing that was ridiculously cheap, which raised my eyebrows. I looked at their sales history, and they had sold tens of thousands of this item. Clearly factory production in China.
- code_duck 7y agoIt's been a problem for Etsy for 10 years. Rather than keep trying to stamp it out, they instead tried to find a way to roll those people into their platform.
- 2zcon 7y ago>His two front teeth (red box) are different shapes and sizes. The teeth on the right side of his mouth have not been rendered properly at all. An analysis of Max’s facial features suggests he has more in common with an AI-generated fake than with a real person. Or a real person who didn't have braces?
- TallGuyShort 7y agoIt's actually a very interesting contrast with what "fake" used to mean in digital media. You see models with flawless skin, perfect teeth, digitally sculpted curves, and the original photo didn't look that flawless. Now somebody has asymmetric ears like I do, and that's a hint they're fake?
- Lendal 7y agoMost of this article is talking about fake photos, not fake Twitter accounts. He goes on to say that if you use your Twitter account for politics, then you are fake. The only thing I agree with is 766 posts in a week is extreme and is an indicator of bot-like activity.
- ryanar 7y agoTweeting at 4-6am and 1-3pm NY time is pretty unusual, and showing up as a dead lawyer in the registry is another quirk. That said, while interesting, I don't know if this article has offered any practical advice. They essentially said, become a private investigator to find out if they are fake.
- zimpenfish 7y ago> Tweeting at 4-6am and 1-3pm NY time is pretty unusual I dunno - if you're a (purported) lawyer in NY, I could imagine 4-6am would be "getting up, gym, breakfast" and 1-3pm would be "lunch, gym, whatever". I'd be more suspicious about the lack of evening tweets, myself. > showing up as a dead lawyer I would probably consider that quite suspicious, yeah.
- pjc50 7y agoOnly tweeting politics is a flag too; real humans have more than one interest. Another indicator that's non-obvious is posting time distribution. Humans can't post 24h a day. But on the other hand if they're all in a 8h window, that person is posting from work - are these posts their job?
- mrlala 7y ago>But on the other hand if they're all in a 8h window, that person is posting from work - are these posts their job? Eh lots of people have desk jobs with enough downtime to be posting throughout their work day while they are bored... then maybe they go home and are doing something else. Although I agree it would be suspect if they never really posted outside that window.
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- DrNuke 7y agoGot out of Twitter after seven years using it like a breaking news website from few vetted sources: bots, venom, ads and shameless plugs just made the experience more and more unsufferable, so good riddance. Also unfollowed any contact on LinkedIn, the amount of motivational fluff and plain gibberish just astounding, something like facebook for professionals. Am I happier? Nope, but the void will be somehow filled by something more productive or just interesting.
- Mathnerd314 7y agoI've been using Twitter for news, IMO it's not too hard to get things "right": - start from a (small) curated list, like https://twitter.com/i/lists/1014747092554866689 https://twitter.com/i/lists/1014747092554866689 for national politics - add in news publications you read - add in reporters from those news publications (they usually link their account in their bio) - add in accounts of people who appear in the stories - continue for 2-3 years At the moment I'm following 18k news-ish accounts spread across 4 lists. The main Twitter interface doesn't work for that many accounts, but Tweetdeck does. I open it up in the morning and get a 10-minute dose of "reality", leaving me with 5-6 interesting news stories to read later from opening the links in background tabs. Even with semi-curated lists there's a lot of fluff in the feeds, but since it scrolls by in less than 10 seconds I don't mind as much. Is this the best setup? Probably not, Nassim Taleb has written some good articles arguing that nobody should read any news. But it's enough to cover most of the popular trends and satisfy that "in the loop" craving.
- vertis 7y agoI am incredibly close to getting rid of my twitter account. Already most of my meaningful interactions have moved to private group chats on Slack (etc).
- jvagner 7y agoI unfollowed all accounts, deleted all my tweets and just login periodically to see what's trending or to follow a hashtag associated with a sporting event I'm interested in. And since I do that from home, I have the twitter app on my iPad but not my phone. Nice way to keep it but throttle it.
- petargyurov 7y agoThe biggest sign mentioned in the article is the insane number of tweets since the inception of the account - surely this must set off some alerts on Twitter's backend? I know that this is an extremely difficult problem to solve and that they probably ban accounts in waves but with something as obvious as this you'd think that the ban could/should come more swiftly...
- mannykannot 7y agoGiven the pressure that Elliott is putting on Dorsey to aggressively grow Twitter, I don't think it is likely that things will improve. https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/3/9/21171482/twitter-jack-dorsey-elliott-deal-jesse-cohn-silver-lake https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/3/9/21171482/twitter-jack-do...
- Traster 7y agoThey got 3 seats on the board and agreed to create a committee literally to search for Dorsey's successor. It's far too late for Dorsey. Realistically they're just letting him go out on his own terms at this point. In a few months Dorsey will announce that he's stepping down because he wants to focus his attention on his other job and that'll be that.
- mannykannot 7y agoI expect so, but I don't expect Elliott to scale back its expectations significantly after that happens.
- FillardMillmore 7y agoDo you have a source for the claim that this committee is searching for Dorsey's successor? I found this from the WSJ about three days ago, but the gist of it seems to be that two new board members were added, they're searching for a 'new independent director' and a deal was struck that allowed Dorsey to maintain his position. https://www.wsj.com/articles/twitter-elliott-strike-truce-that-leaves-ceo-dorsey-in-place-11583758773 https://www.wsj.com/articles/twitter-elliott-strike-truce-th...
- m3kw9 7y agoAnother sign is if they accidentally repeat themselves. It shows it could be a bot account
- volak 7y agoI think its interesting that Twitter has the capability to automatically and instantly tag tweets or accounts as being written by third party apps Yet they choose not to
- osrec 7y agoYes, I am perplexed by this. I have noted an insane number of bots commenting positively on Donald Trump's twitter account. It's obvious they're bots because of the username, lack of other activity, spelling and grammatical mistakes (due to phrases being directly translated from Russian). P.S. Whenever I mention the above on here, I am subject to a barrage of down votes. Almost as if bots are searching HN comments and trying to down vote anything that is negative towards Trump. If this gets down voted heavily, it'll confirm my suspicions yet again...
- dhosek 7y agoI've seen that in some comments I made on another story. Not sure whether it's Russians or Russian bots or just HN-reading Trump fans.
- dhosek 7y agoDownvoted already. On further reflection, I think it must be the last category since it would be a challenge for a Russian [bot] account to get the karma to be able to downvote.
- osrec 7y agoYou'd be surprised. I can imagine they've got a bit of link submission karma, which allows them to downvote. For what it's worth, I'm upvoting you!
- osrec 7y agoThe down voting has begun! @dang, I wonder if this is something you can address somehow?!
- Doctor_Fegg 7y ago> His two front teeth (red box) are different shapes and sizes. Which would be entirely normal for a guy from Manchester. My two front teeth are different shapes and sizes too. We don't really do "cosmetic dentistry" here in the UK, certainly not to the extent it's practised in the US.
- vertis 7y agoAnd my ears are asymmetrical. It does show up in photos from front on (though perhaps not to the extent in this article).
- Seenso 7y ago> And my ears are asymmetrical. It does show up in photos from front on (though perhaps not to the extent in this article). Yeah, I was surprised the article made such a big deal about that. My ears are also a little asymmetrical, and Stephen Colbert's [1] are very obviously so. [1] A famous American comedian with a nightly talk show.
- virusduck 7y agoThis person does not exist.
- ogre_codes 7y ago> Which would be entirely normal for a guy from Manchester. My two front teeth are different shapes and sizes too. We don't really do "cosmetic dentistry" here in the UK, certainly not to the extent it's practised in the US. Is your face perfectly conformant as well? And your pupils inconsistent sized? The point of the article isn't that any one of these features is unusual or worth calling out, it's that few people share all the characteristics of an AI generated face. FWIW, My teeth are a bit irregular and my face might match the eye/ mouth placement from an AI generated face, but my ears and pupils are fine.
- robotichead 7y agoAustralian here - my two front teeth are slightly different sizes, and I am sure I am not a robot
- datashow 7y agoWhy would I follow someone with only 73 followers in the first place? I wish twitter can let me choose to filter out any information from accounts with less than 10000 followers, with exception of my own followings.
- GrinningFool 7y agoWhy would you limit yourself to hearing only people who have large followings?
- datashow 7y agoBecause there are already too much info on Twitter. No?
- GrinningFool 7y agoThere is, but popularity doesn't seem like a good filter to determine the value of a given feed.
- catalogia 7y ago> Why would I follow someone with only 73 followers in the first place? Because not all your friends are rich famous celebrities? (Or maybe they are, I don't know you, I'm just spitballing here..)
- datashow 7y agoI meant random accounts. Friends are definitely not bots, no?
- harrier 7y agoSystems like TPDNE can generate random fake people but can they generate multiple different images of the same fake person? If that is not the case then the existence of different photos should prove a person is real.
- thefreeman 7y agoThis was directly addressed in the article and no they cannot.
- harrier 7y ago> TPDNE only creates a single image of a person That doesn't state that it can't, only that it doesn't. Also, I am wondering about other GANs/image generation systems and not just TPDNE specifically.
- biznickman 7y agoI've been writing about this for years but it's insane to me that Twitter is not stopping this. They are contributing both to group psychosis and the destruction of democracy through the spread of disinformation.
- wombat-man 7y agoGotta keep those MAU counts up!
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- osrec 7y agoHow else will the populist cults survive?! /s
- deminature 7y agoThey have conflicting incentives, it's the same problem all social networks have. Bot accounts qualitatively detract from the real user experience, but substantially inflate quantitative activity metrics, if artificially. Policing bot accounts improves the quality of the site, but hands Elliot Management and others more ammunition that social isn't growing to expectations. Unfortunately these sites continue to pick to optimize the latter rather than the former.
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- inetknght 7y ago> but hands Elliot Management and others more ammunition that social isn't growing to expectations. If the growth is largely from bots, then perhaps Elliot Management is right even if you disagree with the business dealings.
- deminature 7y agoThere's a good argument to be made that Elliot Management is right simply based on absence of stock growth over the past few years. Facebook has grown 200% while Twitter has had incredibly modest gains. That much of Twitter's little growth might be bot-related just compounds the validity of their argument. Twitter can't even fall back on being a public good, as it is has supposedly been a large vector for foreign political interference, and they haven't taken nearly the drastic manual moderation steps that Facebook has to combat this (hiring 15k manual content reviewers [1]). Facebook received huge pushback from investors over this decision, but it looks pretty savvy in retrospect. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/25/18229714/cognizant-facebook-content-moderator-interviews-trauma-working-conditions-arizona https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/25/18229714/cognizant-facebo...
- DiabloD3 7y agoI have a much easier rule set for fake Twitter account detection: Are they saying something I want to hear? Yes? Fake. That's the complete ruleset. I do not follow anyone on Twitter as a result.
- CapacitorSet 7y agoI feel like the article went way too much over aspects like TPDNE and the non-existent lawyer, which - while being useful to know - are somewhat poor indicators of fake profiles especially in a tech circle. I personally know a few people who use TPDNE profile pictures and many who use fake names, although none do both (a wise thing in this day and age). The rest was quite lacking.
- xaxsacsdaffbnk 7y agoMany people use fake avatars, names and locations. Those are not good indicators for bots. Presumably it is more obvious by the stuff being posted. However, the whole question is mostly irrelevant. If you don't care what an account tweets about, don't follow it. The big issue with the whole bot manipulation narrative is that while it is easy to create fake accounts, it is not easy to also get followers for those accounts. Without followers (with voting rights, not some other bots you bought on the dark net), the bot accounts are irrelevant.
- kleer001 7y agoHowever it is easy to create followers for that fake account to add credibility. Why are you defending Twitter so hard? It's garbage and needs to die. Vested interest?
- xaxsacsdaffbnk 7y agoYeah, I am actually an Arabian oil prince with 60% stakes in Twitter shares.
- brenden2 7y agoTwitter has become so low quality that I don't even bother looking at it anymore. The interactions tend to be extremely negative, the ads are annoying and irrelevant, and most of the people who get famous tend to be celebs or narcissistic pseudo-intellectuals who just repeat whatever the populist opinions are for their audience. I've found/met some interesting people though Twitter before, but these days I find it's not worth the noise to find that signal. Twitter seems to want to resist any changes that would make the metrics look bad, but those changes are necessary to make the platform good. For example, they could offer a paid tier with more options to block/filter low quality content. They should also make a decision to either allow all bots, or ban them outright, and also make it easy for end users to tell whether an account is a bot or not. They should scrap the blue check marks and just offer a "twitter gold" badge for anyone willing to pay $5 a month. I don't really care if Twitter has checked anyone's identity, I just want to know if the person tweeting is a human or not.
- zimpenfish 7y ago> more options to block/filter low quality content Over and above what you can already do with curating your followers, blocking people, muting people, muting hashtags, etc.? That's quite the range of options for buffing up the quality content of your timeline, no?
- jimkleiber 7y agoSeems like the only reason Twitter created verified users was because they got sued by Tony LaRussa for his account being impersonated. What I'm wondering is when there will be a class-action lawsuit on behalf of all the everyday people who have had their accounts impersonated? I hope it doesn't have to happen that way, I hope Twitter gives everyone the option to verify their profile, and yet I haven't seen much progress on this front since 2016 when I started looking at it.
- knzhou 7y agoThis is worrying. I already get called a bot or a shill on the regular, and now you can be called a bot for having crooked teeth or "asymmetric ears"? Now I can look forward to internet sleuths scanning my profile picture for imperfections.
- vekker 7y agoNow it just takes a 2nd picture of yourself to prove them wrong, so I wouldn't worry about that (yet?).
- jkubicek 7y agoThe analysis of the generated profile images is all well and good, but a much better indicator of a bot account[0] is the incessant tweeting about certain issues with little to no commentary or context. 0: a bot account or a friend not worth continuing to follow
- listsfrin 7y agoThis article is full of shit. At least until when I stopped reading there were discussing about physical features that don't matter one bit for Twitter accounts.
- dghughes 7y agoI scrubbed my personal info on Twitter due to aggressive people and the potential of doxing me. No birthday, no bio, no profile picture. Twitter won't even let me follow anyone until I confirm my birthday.
- mikedilger 7y agoThe bot panic is IMHO overblown. This comment is however NOT a defense of bots. I think bot detection and deletion of bot accounts would be a good thing. But the concern seems out of proportion. Society is full of disingenuous message amplification systems: a large subset of advertising (TV, magazine, billboards, direct marketing, etc), biased news media, spam, and now twitter bots. Twitter bots are a bit worse than the others because we can no longer tell what opinions are actually popular and which ones are manipulated... via Twitter. But the ability to make such judgements via Twitter has only been with us since 2006. The basic problem is not a novel one. The bot problem cuts both ways because people will overly compensate. I've been accused of being a bot, signalling to everyone that it's perfectly OK to ignore the content of my argument. I fear many other right-leaning people are getting the same treatment. This treatment further divides society (actual bots do too, which I am NOT defending; I'm just showing that the issue cuts both ways). Other commenters in this thread have been flagged and their comments are dead apparently because (if you believe surrounding comments) they are seen as a bot. The day that Twitter becomes a voting platform, or voting platforms allow bots... that is the day that I will panic about bots. All that being said, carry on. Let's squash the bot problem. Let's also fix advertising. Let's also fix news media bias. And spam.
- Buttons840 7y agoIt's ironic that it's often the lone opposing voice that is accused of being a bot. Claiming bots is a valid argument against votes, or against a mass of similar comments and opinions. Claiming bots is not a valid argument against the logic of a single comment or opinion. Yet too often it is the lone contrary opinion, often with supporting evidence and logic (since the person is aware they have a contrary opinion), that is dismissed as simply being a bot. If a solid logical argument comes from a bot it is still a solid logical argument.
- mehrdadn 7y agoThe difference I see between Twitter bots and the other classical examples you mentioned is that anyone and their grandmother can make a destructive Twitter bot on a given day, with comparably little effort, negligible expenses, high anonymity, and hardly any traceability. Which I mean is basically the foundation of Twitter: it's based on the premise that everyone's speech should have worldwide reach with absolutely minimal effort. Whether the larger picture is a good thing or a bad thing, it does mean the bot problem is very much a novel problem and you can't just pretend is similar to the classical ones and deal with it the same way.
- anonnyj 7y agoI use This Person Does Not Exist for my shitposting avatar, but I'm certainly not botting. I just can't have my spicy tweets related to my main account because people will cancel me.
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- knolax 7y agoThe part where the article tries to "prove" that the photo was not of a real person feels like phrenology more than anything. Real people can have asynmetric ears and teeth, and most photographers deliberately try to frame photos in a specific way so some random headshot having the same composition of generated photos isn't much proof. Honestly it looks like this type of psychotic paranoia over "bots" does more harm than actual bots themselves.
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- Waterluvian 7y agoToday I had someone reply to a comment of mine saying that I'm a bot and to report me. Am I not in on a joke? Or am I doing something bot like? Or do people use this to exploit mindless masses to abuse the reporting system?
- subjectsigma 7y agoHopefully this is not too off-topic, but - I like that the article focuses on a bot spamming far-left propaganda. I have tried to encourage my far-right relatives to stop knee-jerk sharing political articles and memes and to diversify their news sources, but for some reason they think that anyone who is worried about fake news, bots, or manipulating elections must be a Satan-worshipping communist. I assume this is because the media has tried their absolute hardest to use these facts to slander Trump. How can we get people to stop focusing so much on the politics and see this as kind of data integrity or trust issue? Showing that "it's not your tribe's fault" is more emotional than rational but people may actually respond to that.