4 ms·

It beggars belief that people don't think the numbers from any of these companies are completely fraudulent. Has anyone been on Twitter? Bots, spam, etc.

aquamarine1 5y ago
how do we know you're not a bot?
xwdv 5y ago
Aye, Twitter seems to be mostly a social network for bots and people’s scripts to talk to each other. Very few real humans posting original thoughts. Maybe celebrity types use it as an easy way to get a word out, but not the common man. Fascinating.
- asdff 5y ago
  I wouldn't be surprised if most celebrity tweets are just written up in advance by their spokesperson and doled out throughout the week with a script.
  - el-salvador 5y ago
    I think that even political speeches are written in a way that they can easily be twitted.
samwillis 5y ago
While there may be a flood of bots and sock puppet accounts, it’s worth noting that advertisers wouldn’t be spending if they couldn’t see actual conversions from Twitter ads. So there are at least enough real people on there for their advertising business to work.
- dylan604 5y ago
  That's not necessarily totally true. The advertising world is susceptible to FOMO just as much as other people. Companies authorize their ad agencies to come up with a campaign and agree on an ad spend for that year/campaign. That money gets split up to cover as many markets as possible. If a competitor is spending on Twitter, then you spend on Twitter as well. You can't give the competitor the entire Twitter market.
jorts 5y ago
I use twitter daily and I believe most of the content I see is real people? Perhaps that's just based on who I follow so I don't have the same experience as you.
- pyronik19 5y ago
  I think it depends on the topic. I don't think you will find many sockpuppet accounts when you are talking about some CS programming framework... but you want to talk about politics? Its where the culture war is being waged.
aeturnum 5y ago
Sure - no one thinks Twitter (or anyone) knows the exact count for real users, etc. But fraudulent activity and bot development is also driven by the underlying success of the website (scammers don't scam where there's no one to scam) so there's reason to pay attention to relative changes (or lack of change) in overall patterns.
adamsmith143 5y ago
If their numbers are completely fraudulent why would they release fraudulent numbers indicating they missed their targets?

aquamarine1 5y ago

how do we know you're not a bot?

xwdv 5y ago

Aye, Twitter seems to be mostly a social network for bots and people’s scripts to talk to each other. Very few real humans posting original thoughts. Maybe celebrity types use it as an easy way to get a word out, but not the common man. Fascinating.

asdff 5y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if most celebrity tweets are just written up in advance by their spokesperson and doled out throughout the week with a script.
- el-salvador 5y ago
  I think that even political speeches are written in a way that they can easily be twitted.

samwillis 5y ago

While there may be a flood of bots and sock puppet accounts, it’s worth noting that advertisers wouldn’t be spending if they couldn’t see actual conversions from Twitter ads. So there are at least enough real people on there for their advertising business to work.

dylan604 5y ago
That's not necessarily totally true. The advertising world is susceptible to FOMO just as much as other people. Companies authorize their ad agencies to come up with a campaign and agree on an ad spend for that year/campaign. That money gets split up to cover as many markets as possible. If a competitor is spending on Twitter, then you spend on Twitter as well. You can't give the competitor the entire Twitter market.

jorts 5y ago

I use twitter daily and I believe most of the content I see is real people? Perhaps that's just based on who I follow so I don't have the same experience as you.

pyronik19 5y ago
I think it depends on the topic. I don't think you will find many sockpuppet accounts when you are talking about some CS programming framework... but you want to talk about politics? Its where the culture war is being waged.

aeturnum 5y ago

Sure - no one thinks Twitter (or anyone) knows the exact count for real users, etc. But fraudulent activity and bot development is also driven by the underlying success of the website (scammers don't scam where there's no one to scam) so there's reason to pay attention to relative changes (or lack of change) in overall patterns.

adamsmith143 5y ago

If their numbers are completely fraudulent why would they release fraudulent numbers indicating they missed their targets?