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1. Retailers have had issues curbing bots hoovering up video cards, PlayStations, etc. 2. Most of the Twitter bots people are worried about when they talk abou

by fooqux 4y ago

1. Retailers have had issues curbing bots hoovering up video cards, PlayStations, etc. 2. Most of the Twitter bots people are worried about when they talk about bots are state-funded. If companies can't prevent a self-funded scalper, what makes you think Twitter will be able to prevent Russia? There are a lot of ways to obfuscate payments so they don't look to be coming from the same source. Even more ways when you control the banks.

dannyw 4y ago
Retailers didn't really care. A sale is a sale, and scalpers are less likely to return or ask for a refund.
- mrtranscendence 4y ago
  They care a little, because establishing relationships with (and gathering data on) real customers is more valuable than having single entities hoovering up all the supply. Further, real people often buy more than one item. I'm sure you've noticed retailers putting limits on specific items before.
  - oneeyedpigeon 4y ago
    > Further, real people often buy more than one item. But... scalpers do this, especially so. As far as a retailer is concerned, a scalper is every bit as 'real' as any other customer.
dd36 4y ago
I agree with dannyw. Also, Twitter influencing requires scale. You can fake some but patterns will emerge that make it harder and harder. Now, if it succeeds, that does create an incentive for corruption within Twitter. The enemies of democracy have huge incentives to keep up these divisive public influence campaigns that have worked this past decade.
nicolas_t 4y ago
1. Retailers have had issues curbing bots hoovering up video cards, PlayStations, etc. I work in this field and to be honest, the main reason retailers have issues curbing bots is that they don't really spend much resource on it. It's a game of cat and mouse, there's constant work that needs to be done but there's a lot of low hanging fruits that the vast majority of retailers don't do to block bots. And, no, just setting up perimeterx and calling it a day is not enough.

by fooqux 4y ago

dannyw 4y ago

Retailers didn't really care. A sale is a sale, and scalpers are less likely to return or ask for a refund.

mrtranscendence 4y ago
They care a little, because establishing relationships with (and gathering data on) real customers is more valuable than having single entities hoovering up all the supply. Further, real people often buy more than one item. I'm sure you've noticed retailers putting limits on specific items before.
- oneeyedpigeon 4y ago
  > Further, real people often buy more than one item. But... scalpers do this, especially so. As far as a retailer is concerned, a scalper is every bit as 'real' as any other customer.

dd36 4y ago

I agree with dannyw. Also, Twitter influencing requires scale. You can fake some but patterns will emerge that make it harder and harder. Now, if it succeeds, that does create an incentive for corruption within Twitter. The enemies of democracy have huge incentives to keep up these divisive public influence campaigns that have worked this past decade.

nicolas_t 4y ago

1. Retailers have had issues curbing bots hoovering up video cards, PlayStations, etc. I work in this field and to be honest, the main reason retailers have issues curbing bots is that they don't really spend much resource on it. It's a game of cat and mouse, there's constant work that needs to be done but there's a lot of low hanging fruits that the vast majority of retailers don't do to block bots. And, no, just setting up perimeterx and calling it a day is not enough.