19 ms·

The spam on Twitter

262 points by powera 4y ago

Graziano_M 4y ago
Try tweeting anything mentioning metamask.
bombcar 4y ago
YouTube has suddenly encountered a rash of “comment reply scam/spam” where if you reply to a famous YouTuber someone with the same profile picture will reply almost instantly with a generic thank you / won a prize type comment and try to get you to use telegram or discord. It’s all so pitiful. As for Twitter the check mark might actually be useful if it disappeared the moment you changed your “display name” but we can’t have that!
- wnevets 4y ago
  Games Nexus did an entire video [1] about it and even paid the scammer. Apparently the scammers heavily downvoted the video. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqPPWO7kWu4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqPPWO7kWu4
- iLoveOncall 4y ago
  > As for Twitter the check mark might actually be useful if it disappeared the moment you changed your “display name” but we can’t have that! Just requiring 2FA for checkmarked accounts and an ID confirmation to remove said 2FA would eliminate 90% of the scams already.
- bko 4y ago
  The worst thing is that the workflow to report spam has gotten a lot worse since the last 6 months. Now it takes 9 clicks 1. three dots 2. report spam 3. welcome message start report 4. who is this report for? myself, some specific group, everyone (??) 5. general info (attacked b/c of identity, harassed, spam, ... ) 6. how is he doing this? (Posting misleading or deceptive links, leading to scams, phishing, or other malicious links, +6 more similarly verbose) 7. yes continue 8. submit 9. done It used to be like 2 or 3 about 6 months ago but I remember after Musk started complaining they responded by somehow making it worse. Also most of the reports are centered around harassment or racist comments when 90% of the bad content on twitter most people deal with is straight up scams. There should just be a big this is spam button.
  - drtz 4y ago
    My pessimistic view: making it too easy to report spam may highlight how much spam there actually is on Twitter. Something the company definitely does not want to do at the moment.
    - gcmac 4y ago
      I wonder if their A/B test showed that this was somehow "solving" the "spam of spam reports" problem. It would be fairy naive but I could envision a world where they tested this out, saw fewer (but more detailed) spam reports and concluded that the prior distribution of spam reports was itself not reliable (e.g overcounted the problem). This is obviously self-serving but seems like it may at least be a "consistent" world view where they aren't totally cynical.
      - bko 4y ago
        It's just bad UX and confusing. Consider this question "Who is this report for?". Here are the options: 1. Myself 2. Someone else or a specific group of people -- This Tweet is directed at or mentions someone else or a specific group of people — like racial or religious groups. Everyone on Twitter 3. This Tweet isn’t targeting a specific person or group, but it affects everyone on Twitter — like misleading info or sensitive content. For the same Vitalik spam tweet you see everywhere, I'm guessing 3, but its kind of weird question Then "Everyone on Twitter is being ..." 1. Attacked because of their identity 2. Slurs, misgendering, racist or sexist stereotypes, encouraging others to harass, sending hateful imagery Harassed or intimidated with violence 3. Sexual harassment, group harassment, insults or name calling, posting private info, threatening to expose private info, violent event denial, violent threats, celebration of violent acts 4. Spammed 5. Posting malicious links, misusing hashtags, fake engagement, repetitive replies, Retweets, or Direct Messages. Shown content related to or encouraged to self-harm 6. Shown misleading info 7. Offered tips or currency — or encouraged to send them — in a way that’s deceptive or promotes or causes harm I guess spammed, but I'm pretty sure its a malicious link and misleading, so either 4 or 5 or 6 Then, "How is ⁦@... doing this?" 1. Posting misleading or deceptive links, leading to scams, phishing, or other malicious links 2. Misusing hashtags, such as unrelated hashtags and large number of hashtags 3. Sending a lot of aggressive, unwanted, repetitive or unrelated replies, Retweets, or Direct Messages 4. Fake engagement, such as aggressively Retweeting or buying and selling Likes, replies, or other Twitter features 5. Using multiple accounts to interact or coordinate with other people to manipulate accounts, Tweets, or other Twitter features 6. Following and then unfollowing large numbers of accounts so to inflate follower count 7. Something else I guess its a deceptive link, but I'm not sure because I didn't click on it. I also didn't click 5 on the previous step which was "posting malicious links", I clicked spammed. But he's also using repetitive or unrelated replies so maybe 3 as well? And almost certainly the person running the scam is using multiple accounts. That's a lot of words to read every time, and I'm pretty sure it has changed since I started reporting stuff regularly.
- geerlingguy 4y ago
  I just got my channel added to an 'alpha' of their new spam prevention algorithm... and it seems to be working so far (fingers crossed). I was getting around 300 spam replies to comments on my videos per week up until the alpha started—now I'm getting 0. So maybe they finally cracked that nut, but I won't count my chickens before they're hatched. I still run YT-Spammer-Purge[1] daily, but it's come up dry for the past week now. [1] https://github.com/ThioJoe/YT-Spammer-Purge https://github.com/ThioJoe/YT-Spammer-Purge
- badwolf 4y ago
  Similarly on Instagram it's the sudden slew of "promote it on <spamaccount>" type comments. Dozens of them within minutes of posting anything.
  - RicoElectrico 4y ago
    And "+18" profiles viewing your Stories, with links to shady sites in the bio. They're so similar to each other that manual rules would suffice to cull them, AI my ass.
- Aunche 4y ago
  I'm also seeing a lot of spam comments pretending to be organic conversation about the market, which eventually leads to you to a "financial advisor" with an oddly unique name that is easy to Google, which leads you to a sketchy website.
- cwkoss 4y ago
  > As for Twitter the check mark might actually be useful if it disappeared the moment you changed your “display name” but we can’t have that! That would be a very smart policy, but twitter is too afraid of inconveniencing psuedojournalist professional hand wringers and their pressing need to update their display names with the emoji that shows they Care about the important issue of the month. Or to be even more blasphemous, perhaps Twitter should hire humans to review changes to bluechecks' display names.
  - lbriner 4y ago
    Then here's an idea. Have a profile picture and have a person picture. You can change one and not the other. You're welcome Twitter, no need to thank or pay me (unless you want to of course!)
- asddubs 4y ago
  youtube is a pit of spam in general. Basically any bigger video, every single comment that's even just somewhat high up either has a respond that says something like "check this out <video link>" or "see here <video link>", or a comment left by someone with a username along the lines of "click my profile picture for my pics" with a suggestive avatar
tenpies 4y ago
It has gotten so much worst to the point that I wonder if Twitter employees are trying to execute some sort of poison pill so that Musk does not purchase the company, and they can continue to amplify their agendas and squelch opposition.
- aaronrobinson 4y ago
  The other way around. He’s cited fake account levels and trying to get out of the deal.
meowface 4y ago
Naturally, the top reply under that is the exact same scam-spam in the screenshot.
mattgreenrocks 4y ago
Cynical me is surprised the "blue checkmark = credibility" thing is starting to crumble. (Actual me can't help smile a bit.) However, I don't know what they can do here. They set up the system where the users respond to blue checkmarks positively. Adding another layer of blue checkmark is confusing and silly, but having it be gamed is also not good.
- cinntaile 4y ago
  The solution is obvious, you get a golden checkmark if you're super verified.
  - jeffrallen 4y ago
    Extra verified (EV). Worked great for TLS (eye roll).
- Beltalowda 4y ago
  The funniest part is that one of these spam accounts actually replied with the same spam facepalm. Lots of replies, all from what seem bot/spam accounts. The (verified) account bio is "Official Account of the Directorate of School Principals, School Supervisors, and Tendik, Directorate General of GTK, Ministry of Education and Culture, Research and Technology" (translated from Indonesian). It's probably a legit account that got compromised; tweets from a few days ago are all fine (and about Indonesian politics and the like). So basically, the problem isn't really with the blue checkmark as such; it's useful to verify this is an official government account rather than some random guy; the problem is this account got compromised somehow.
  - lolinder 4y ago
    Compromised or not, the blue checkmark is completely meaningless if you can change display names and not have to re-verify your account. Profile pictures I can see allowing for convenience, but what is the blue checkmark supposed to be certifying if not the person's name?
illuminerdy 4y ago
I don't think you needed to include "The spam on". The statement works just as well without it.
ranger_danger 4y ago
People are outraged at kiwifarms and their users allegedly driving people to suicide, but twitter's "body count" is much higher than probably any other site. Where's the outrage for that??
- the_doctah 4y ago
  I'm confused, it sounds like you're asking for more censorship on Twitter, which is not even the subject at hand. Unless you're suggesting bots are killing people.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- DanBC 4y ago
  > Where's the outrage for that?? https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3137 https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3137 > As use of the internet has expanded there has been an increasing awareness that online content and activity can cause serious harm to users. There are growing levels of public concern about online content and activity that is lawful but potentially harmful. Whilst harmful content may fall short of amounting to a criminal offence, it can have damaging effects on individuals - creating toxic online environments and negatively impacting a user’s ability to express themself online.
  - ranger_danger 4y ago
    I meant campaigns against twitter for all the abuse they host, and cloudflare for all the other messed up sites they continue to host, like monkey torture videos.
lantry 4y ago
sure, but one false positive and it's "I got banned from twitter for no reason! muh freedom of speech!" Moderation will never be perfect, and IMO it's better to err on the false negative side
- eminence32 4y ago
  Real humans being caught up in anti-spam measures would be much easier to stomach if there was a sane way to talk to a human at Twitter and get the ban reversed.
101008 4y ago
How did they get the blue checkmark on Twitter? It is really hard to get one honestly (I applied a few times showing that my "brand" was quoted/linked on Wikipedia and several large media outlets) - unless they are paying several thousands (which I don't think this is the case)
- djbusby 4y ago
  Yeah, my old account, for a business, valid trademark, etc - check box rejected :(
- iLoveOncall 4y ago
  It's a hacked account that got rebranded.
  - MattGaiser 4y ago
    I am surprised you can rebrand without redoing verification.
    - MallocVoidstar 4y ago
      A lot of big name people will add small notes about important announcements to their display names (new book out, stuff like that) so preventing name changes entirely would be very unpopular.
      - bee_rider 4y ago
        This seems like it ought to be easy to work around. Like, verify a base name, and then give them a little space afterwards where they can add something. The displayed name is the combination of the two. They can even make it a different color to emphasize the announced thing.
        snowwrestler 4y ago
        Changing the visible display name frequently is a significant part of Twitter culture. In a few weeks, tons of people will change their name to a “spooky” version for Halloween, for example. It’s not a feature Twitter will kill just because of a few scammers.
shadowgovt 4y ago
Honest question for people who still use Twitter: what keeps you on? I deleted my account half a decade ago and haven't missed it.
- alexb_ 4y ago
  I'm in communities that function completely off of Twitter. Leaving twitter = you now know nothing about what's going on.
- JustSomeNobody 4y ago
  I don't follow anyone who even hints at crypto. That alone eliminates 99.999% of s(p|c)am.
- WA 4y ago
  Some people post interesting things you can’t find elsewhere.
- ljosifov 4y ago
  People whose opinions I rate post write ideas that I find interesting. I use "Latest Tweets" timeline mostly - only sometimes check "Home" TL. Never follow any Topics or similar - strictly individual accounts. Block or mute annonimous and/or rude/ugly etc liberally.
- d23 4y ago
  I see essentially no spam because I don't follow accounts that would spam me or receive a lot of spam replies. The people I follow are interesting. That's about it.
  - lanstin 4y ago
    Yeah, exactly, I love learning about geology (esp sedimentation) and maths and medieval history and a bit of philosophy and some software stuff and a little tech business and conservation biology and a lot of various Star Trek accounts and a varying amount of news or political accounts and so on. If someone starts posting too much, I have to unfollow. I block all accounts that show me a sponsored post, and make sure to only do time-based time line. It's excellent content and fast propagation of news. I most often will link into y combinator posts from tweets. The only spam I've seen is on #hashtag searches, especially #covid19 (with, in 2020 a ton of k-pop spam for some reason) and various crypto folks (with more spam in replying to true believers than sceptics, make of that what you will).
whywhywhywhy 4y ago
Twitter could combat it but doesn’t. The same “did you check this out? <YouTube link>” message has been in every popular tweet for months now.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
Why do you use it then? Honest question.
NelsonMinar 4y ago
Here's a search for tweets from verified accounts offering this specific Ethereum scam: https://twitter.com/search?q=filter%3Averified%20%22giving%20away%2050%2C000%20ETH!%22&src=typed_query&f=live https://twitter.com/search?q=filter%3Averified%20%22giving%2...
- TonyTrapp 4y ago
  I wonder how some of those can be verified accounts at all. They appear to have been hijacked just hours ago, their original content and followers are still there. The rules for Twitter Verification say "Demonstrate your account has a follower count in the top .05% of active accounts located in the same geographic region" yet some of these accounts just have a few hundred followers. Surely 300 followers cannot be in the top .05% of active accounts in, say, Indonesia? Edit: The best one so far, replying to @POTUS: https://twitter.com/IYCKarnataka/status/1570126180791242753 https://twitter.com/IYCKarnataka/status/1570126180791242753
  - georgiecasey 4y ago
    I wouldn't be surprised if someone responsible for verifying accounts in Indonesia took a bribe.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      What do you bet a KPM for some manager somewhere is number of new verified accounts?
  - colatkinson 4y ago
    I don't think the follower count being that high is a hard requirement. The sentence in full: > Follower or Mention Count: If your account is detected to be in the top .05% follower or mention count for your geographic location, it may count towards notability evidence for certain categories. Emphasis mine. The other listed sources of "notability" are things like news coverage, IMDB references, and Google Trends. So for example, an elderly state senator who "never quite figured out the socials" would not have millions of followers, but would be eligible for verification because they are notable for other reasons. The follower count thing seems more like a bolster for influencers and such. They won't have industry references, given that they aren't really in an industry per se, and they won't probably won't end up on the front page of the NYT just for having lots of followers. But nonetheless, it's in the best interest of both the influencer and Twitter to avoid having phonies of the influencer promoting scams.
aaroninsf 4y ago
Idle question, I have always assumed screen name and badge are just-in-time, reflective of present account settings, modulo caching etc., and not pinned so to speak to their state at the time of a Tweet. It's got to be the case, or you could just keep flip-flopping and have a dialog with yourself that looked at a glance like an actual interchange (until the account handle was examined)...
shabbatt 4y ago
Unfortunately crypto has fueled this. I regularly see coinbase or binance profiles in the reply section of highly visible tweets.
MattGaiser 4y ago
I’m surprised you can change a verified account name and retain the verification. That seems like the biggest flaw.
orblivion 4y ago
Looks like the spammers noticed Paul's tweet https://twitter.com/kspstk_gtk/status/1570094371009069056 https://twitter.com/kspstk_gtk/status/1570094371009069056 lol
- nneonneo 4y ago
  It’s amusing to me that they end each fake reply with a string of four random letters. What better way to scream “I’m a bot”?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - dr_kiszonka 4y ago
    I wonder what these strings are. Some sort of an ID? Or maybe to make these tweets sufficiently different from each other to avoid triggering spam detection?
    - TremendousJudge 4y ago
      I'd put my money on the second one
    - jstarfish 4y ago
      I was impersonated on another medium recently. Appending some sort of hash to the end of every message was my first thought as a countermeasure. (Didn't end up implementing; easier to abandon the platform altogether and deny anything purportedly attributable to me.)
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- bitwize 4y ago
  One of the bots is named AberBluehair. There's something very "how do you do, fellow young people" about that. HELLO. THIS IS MARY. I AM A HUMAN WITH SOFT SKIN. https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2000/01/28/move-over-hell https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2000/01/28/move-over-hell
AYBABTME 4y ago
[conspiracy theory hat on] what if Elon is pushing a spam campaign to support his argument in court? [/conspiracy theory hat on]
- snowwrestler 4y ago
  The level of reply spam on Twitter is irrelevant to the legal status of the merger agreement.
  - bogwog 4y ago
    Relevant: https://www.techdirt.com/2022/07/25/if-someone-is-prattling-on-about-spam-on-twitter-and-how-that-helps-elon-musk-send-them-this-article/ https://www.techdirt.com/2022/07/25/if-someone-is-prattling-...
  - LightG 4y ago
    But the prominence of the issue is. Wheel out a "whistle-blower" or two and Bob's your Uncle. Forgive me, there are enough cultish Elon worshippers around that I can easily give credence to this theory. In fact, on the balance of probability (given the fanatics and Musks powers), I would say it is actually the most reasonable explanation.
    - wyclif 4y ago
      It's really not about Elon Musk cultism. It's about the fact that he was right to question how many Twitter accounts were bots/spam. This is Musk's vindication.
- DominoTree 4y ago
  This has been going on far longer than any of his financial entanglement with Twitter, unfortunately.
- SrslyJosh 4y ago
  He waived due diligence, so too bad for him.
- 4y ago
michaelwww 4y ago
I find the lack of spam filtering tools Twitter provides us to be appalling. "vitalik.eth 50,000 Ethereum give away" is a well known example that keeps appearing from new accounts. I should be able to set filter. Right now I can only hide all content from the account, which keeps changing.
- nevereveragain 4y ago
  You can add keyword blocks instead of blocking the entire account. Isn't obvious, but it's there.
  - michaelwww 4y ago
    Hey, learn something new every day How to use advanced muting options https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/advanced-twitter-mute-options https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/advanced-twitter-m...
- seizethecheese 4y ago
  You can definitely mute keywords
  - mh- 4y ago
    FYI, they have to be exact phrase matches though. So you'll have to add permutations like "Ethereum giveaway" "Ethereum! give away".
skrowl 4y ago
Elon was right. WAAAAY more than < 10% of the users are bots.
- gowld 4y ago
  "Users" is a nonsense metric. Twitter's claim was always about monetization accuracy: that <10% of ad impressions are shown to bots.
- bombcar 4y ago
  It’s the real users who never post vs bots who obviously post.
- LightG 4y ago
  Simplistic conclusion. I'd argue you're buying into the hype.
ks2048 4y ago
I don't know if it's considered "spam", but another super-annoying thing is when you have to scroll past a whole page of "@downloadbot" or whatever those video-download bots are named. If you want to allow those kinds of things, why are they visible for everyone?
snowwrestler 4y ago
It’s worth noting that Paul posted this thought to Twitter. For as much as everyone complains about Twitter, there is obviously value in the product.
- jdminhbg 4y ago
  Absolutely. The Zuckerberg characterization of Twitter as "a clown car that fell into a gold mine" remains the most accurate.
system16 4y ago
Comically, when I view this tweet in my browser, at the top right in the "Relevant people" box that Twitter wants me to pay attention to and follow is _another_ fake yet verified Vitalik account. Honest question: what do Twitter's army of engineers and designers actually do every day? The site is slow, the UI is god awful, and the spam is - as this tweet points - appalling.
- claytongulick 4y ago
  Activism.
- iLoveOncall 4y ago
  > what do Twitter's army of engineers and designers actually do every day? They work on more dark patterns to force you to give your phone number or to create an account to read a tweet.
  - cowtools 4y ago
    Yes, as someone who does international travel and frequently switches phone numbers, dealing with phone-based 2FA """security""" is a major problem for me. At least I will not waste time on their website. I just never give my phone number out anymore, no matter what because it will be used against me. Even google is trying to hold my account hostage, luckily they have an email forwarding feature so I no longer need to log in.
- sbierwagen 4y ago
  >and the spam is - as this tweet points - appalling. Incentives. If the expected value of a single spam message is in the micropennies, then you have to send enormous volumes of them, which can easily be detected by automated tools. Cryptocurrency changes this. Now an account hack can net the attacker millions of dollars. This means you can send many fewer messages and invest much more time in each of them.
- madeofpalk 4y ago
  Heh - in the Relevant people box I've started getting people who I've blocked, and have blocked me!
cwkoss 4y ago
The vitalik spoofing spam bots are such low hanging fruit. They should really just auto shadow ban anyone using his profile picture besides the real vitalik. (And probably elon musk too..) I wonder if its an issue of being tangled up in internal bureaucracy, or not wanting to implement one-off solutions to glaring issues that can't be generalized. Certainly a management failure somewhere.
- bombcar 4y ago
  They’d just change the image and name slightly to pass the filters.
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    Literally 4chan 101.
  - mattnewton 4y ago
    Still making it so easy that they can have literally his name and photo with a blue check mark seems sloppy to me?
  - cwkoss 4y ago
    There are a number of well established image similarity algorithms that could be used past simple equality.
- iudqnolq 4y ago
  I suspect it's because there are many completely different Twitter "communities". The obvious stuff you see all the time is completely different from the low hanging fruit I'd list off. I do wish they'd ban blue emojis at the start and end of display names. I see that all the time logged in or logged out.
- rajeshp1986 4y ago
  what if real Vitalik decides to put the picture of a dog on his profile pic? It would effectively shadow ban every user who has a dog picture.
- 4y ago
duxup 4y ago
A twitter account I signed up for a while back was immediately followed by someone who claimed to live in the city my zip code falls in and described themself as "a former libtard who saw the light". Followed by the exact posts you would expect, including odd local location name dropping. It was not a great start.
hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
Not being a big Twitter user, I didn't understand the whole "blue checkmark verified" scam, which works like this: 1. There are a host of requirements needed to get the blue check: https://help.twitter.com/en/managing-your-account/about-twitter-verified-accounts https://help.twitter.com/en/managing-your-account/about-twit... 2. However, once an account gets the blue check, the owner is free to change the profile pic and display name, and the blue check doesn't go away. 3. So the scam is that some bad guy buys a previously verified account, changes the profile pic and display name to someone else famous, then uses it to phish. #2 is colossally stupid, and is trivial to prevent (lots of dating sites require profile changes and pic changes to be reviewed before going live). Apparently this has been going on a long time so is baffling to me.
- godelski 4y ago
  About once a week I get a mass message from a random twitter account with extremely clear spam (they even leave the group message after they send it!). They are often centered around crypto. I don't know how they are this bad because a Naive Bayesian Classifier could block this stuff.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Twitter users love changing their profile picture/name to support the current cause of the moment so much that it’s become a meme. Changing that would piss off their active posters.
  - pawelduda 4y ago
    Pretty simple to solve - change your profile pic/name, lose blue checkmark until you get verified again.
    - badwolf 4y ago
      This is kind of how Scruff (gay dating app) works. Change your profile pic? Lose your verified status and have to go thru verification again.
    - 4y ago
paxys 4y ago
I'd prefer outright crypto scams over all the "There are many ways to improve your life. Here are 30 best ones" threads that have taken over my feed over the last few months. PLEASE give me a way to turn that off.
- Finnucane 4y ago
  There is a way. It's pretty obvious if you think about it.
Aaronstotle 4y ago
Twitter and Instagram seem to be overloaded with bots. In my Twitter DMs I get 5-10 messages per day from clear crypto-scams, and under posts from high profile people there are loads of bots. Instagram is no better, bots comment some obvious scam statement "Who wants to see me naked" with 140 likes on a post that was just created. Instagram doesn't want to address the problem because it gives them fake "user" numbers.
- leobg 4y ago
  Dude, it’s 5 percent. ;)
  - LightG 4y ago
    I would wager it's much less. This is only a problem for certain blue checks. The problem is thus amplified because these big dawgs are moaning about it. Forgive me for not caring. This is like King Charles the 3rd complaining about his dripping pen (true current news story). I'm sure it incredibly annoying to him but to the rest of people it's laughable. I'll accept that it's a problem for followers of these big dawgs. But maybe there's a lesson in there somewhere.......
    - BitwiseFool 4y ago
      >"This is like King Charles the 3rd complaining about his dripping pen (true current news story). I'm sure it incredibly annoying to him but to the rest of people it's laughable." Given the enormous amount of stress and pressure he is currently under, not just as the new King, but also having just had his mother die, I'm impressed at his composure. I suspect most of us would have snapped and shown far greater emotion.
      - IntelMiner 4y ago
        He could just abdicate the throne, instead of being the spoiled wretch he is (British Monarchy is the only time calling ones self a "Republican" is palatable thanks to the Americans)
ethotool 4y ago
Isn’t this one of the reasons why Elon Musk was interested in acquiring Twitter in the first place? To improve various aspects of the platform as a privately owned company and turn it more into a town square..? Nobody who is mentally all there has ever claimed that Twitter is perfect. It’s just weird to me that everyone is acting surprised when the truth is Twitter has been getting hate since day one..
- markdown 4y ago
  > Isn’t this one of the reasons why Elon Musk was interested in acquiring Twitter in the first place? No, that's one of his "stated" reasons. His actual reason is unknown.
- squidbeak 4y ago
  Fair complaint isn't hate.
LightG 4y ago
It's bad for blue checks, I've never had an issue! Forgive me for not being that sympathetic. Interesting how it's becoming a major issue now (I mean, it has always has been for big accounts) since the Musky Douchey Hypeman requires it to be a major issue in the upcoming court case. Personally, advertise yourself with the stench of manure and expect horseflies.
bambax 4y ago
It's unlikely that PG suddenly discovered Twitter spam problem. Sounds like he's cultivating Musk, or at the very least, trying to signal that he supports him. A couple of weeks ago, Matt Levine predicted that would happen: > If you have something to do with Twitter, or you know something about Twitter, or you are in the business of counting Twitter bots, then you should take a few minutes and ask yourself: Well, do I know anything about Twitter doing any massive frauds? If you do… look, I don’t know exactly what you can do with that. (...) Still. I just have a vague general sense that saving the richest person in the world $44 billion is a good career move. > So you should expect that, over the next month or two, as Musk’s trial date with Twitter approaches, people will be popping up to say “oh sure Twitter is a fraud, massive fraud, totally, I have proof, Elon, call me.” https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-08-23/amc-goes-ape https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-08-23/amc-go...
- SrslyJosh 4y ago
  > Sounds like he's cultivating Musk, or at the very least, trying to signal that he supports him. Well, Musk waived due diligence, so... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- barnbuilder 4y ago
  Yes he probably knew about Twitter's pervasive spam problem before but today has been a particularly bad day, as spammers are deploying a large number of hijacked verified accounts to impersonate the Ethereum founder coinciding with a major network change happening today. While all spam is bad, scams posted from a fake "verified" account are particularly odious.
- jdminhbg 4y ago
  > It's unlikely that PG suddenly discovered Twitter spam problem. It is, he's been tweeting about it constantly prior to the Musk acquisition.
DominoTree 4y ago
Similar all over Facebook as well - I've reported hundreds of scams using the exact same verbiage and images in sponsored posts, purporting to be Tesla or SpaceX or Amazon or so-forth selling new crypto tokens, using hacked verified pages. Would be trivial to detect if they cared. But beyond simply not caring, they're actually making money.
qwertox 4y ago
I can't use Twitter, I don't know how to use it. Sometimes I do these "latest" searches in order to see if GitHub or something else is down, or when there's a breaking news of worldwide relevance in order to get to know what's happening. But even these searches are 95% useless junk tweets in between of some relevant tweets. The "following"-thing hasn't worked for me for around a decade, there's just too much garbage in the stream or main page or whatever it is called. And for a couple of months now I've noticed that when I use it on a device which is not logged into Twitter, usually because a Reddit post leads me to it, it has agressive Instagram-like tactics in wanting you to log in or sign up and in that state has the same aggressive, unwelcoming vibe which Pinterest has. Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter.
smoe 4y ago
My problem with twitter is not even user spam, but twitters own engagement spam, it seems to be impossible to just see the content of people I follow I recently signed up first time after like 8 years to follow a handful of interesting accounts. But only maybe 20% of stuff I see is actually from them, the rest is all suggestions by twitter what people/topics I should follow or what people that the people I follow follow posted, etc. And there only seems to be ways to show "fewer" of something, not get rid of it altogether. Completely useless. I reckon there are third party apps and browser extensions to filter this, but since I don't care about those few accounts I follow enough either, I couldn't be bothered and deleted my account again.
- knocknock 4y ago
  if you switch from the "Home" timeline to the "Latest Tweets" timeline, you should only see things from people you follow.
- fknorangesite 4y ago
  You can switch between "Home" (default, what you're describing) and "Latest" (what you want) feeds. I'm not sure about a mobile app, if that's what you're using, but on web at least it's the stars-icon-button in the top right of the feed.
  - patch_cable 4y ago
    Mobile app works the same way. Twitter is basically unusable to me without changing this setting.
- mzs 4y ago
  I think twitter wants you to make a list for that.
- dotnet00 4y ago
  The only way Twitter is usable to me is using the 'Better Twitter' browser extension, which filters out most of their recommendation stuff.
- 4y ago
andrew_ 4y ago
Depending on the circles one frequents on Twitter, "blue checks" are trusted and respected, or mocked and distrusted. There's still no clear messaging on what it means, grants are seemingly arbitrary anymore. It's quite the debacle.
joshstrange 4y ago
Twitter is unusable unless you are using a third-party client (which they don't give full access to). I sometimes tweet into the void about issues but rarely read twitter anymore except during something like an Apple event when I want to see what a handful of people are saying. Scrolling through my main feed (on the official web/client) is utter garbage. Sponsored-this, suggested-that, your-friend-liked, your-friend-also-follows, etc. Kill me. I want to read tweets from the specific people I follow, I don't need suggestions, I don't need the algorithm, I sure as hell don't care about followers-of-followers-type shit. The notifications I get from Twitter are also terrible, like I've given Twitter more than enough info over the last decade+ that it shouldn't be showing me certain suggested tweets (or whatever they call that block of random tweets they inject under a tweet I'm looking at). Twitter, like most large tech companies, astounds me. I literally have no clue what their thousands of employees/"engineers" do everyday. I work at a tiny company (<15 total, 6 developers) and it feels like we make way more forward progress in a month than twitter has in the last decade. For over 6 months they completely broke their browser notifications because someone renamed their Twitter account to "tweet" and so browser notifications would open that user's account instead of the tweet it was being linked to (the URL the browser would open would be something like /tweet?id=XXXXXXXX). It's fucking ametuer hour over there and they are wasting their time on adding things like podcasts to Twitter? They doesn't deserve to succeed.
NoFactualActual 4y ago
I'm not sure it's "spam" if you have to find it. Surely twitter ads are far closer to email spam than someone impersonating another person.
- barnbuilder 4y ago
  The spammers impersonate famous people and then spam the replies of other famous people, for example the fake Vitalik in the OP is a reply to one of paulg's tweets. If you read the threads under certain people's tweets (or anyone's tweets containing cryptocurrency related keywords) you will have no choice but to wade through copious amounts of this muck.
  - NoFactualActual 4y ago
    I'm still not quite clear what qualifies this as "spam" given that you need to opt into viewing the tweets. It seems like a clear-cut case of impersonation. Spam is an entirely different concept that cannot be reduced to "I don't want to see this content" (which would, again, necessarily include ads...). Granted, I would consider 99% of what pg would likely consider "legitimate" cryptocurrency content to be de-facto spam, but that's just a part of being on the internet at this point. The problem he raises seems negligible in comparison to the other commercial content that pollutes twitter.
lifefeed 4y ago
If you mute "NFT" and various crypto keywords you won't see 99% of the spam. It's a not a scalable solution, but it works well for me.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
jpe90 4y ago
Seems like a pretty decent time to exit social media entirely, I think.
jononomo 4y ago
I got banned for life from Twitter for tweeting "sheesh, I'd kill myself if I was still programming in java after age 50" (or something like that -- I've since deleted the tweet and can't remember the wording, but the gist is correct.) This was viewed as "encouraging self harm" so I got a lifetime ban. Yes, it was my second offense. A week or two earlier I had tweeted "I wish anti-vaxxers would go jump off a bridge". So that was two strikes and I got the lifetime ban instantly -- within less than two seconds -- while also being informed that my lifetime ban had been "after careful review". In any case, I'm a real human being and I can't use Twitter anymore. So the bots run free, but my obviously human account got a lifetime ban for tweets that could not possibly be seriously construed as dangerous. Honestly, the tweets are barely noteworthy. Also, I had something like 28 followers and I was little more than an occasional reply guy. Also, aside from the bots, the amount of absolutely ridiculously bad taste stuff I see tweeted that doesn't result in a lifetime ban is astonishing. Supposedly I can appeal my ban but I haven't done so because I'm dead certain that if I do I will just get an even more solid lifetime ban, along with all my personal details stored in their list of atrocious actors. I guess I'm holding out for Elon Musk to be forced to buy Twitter and for some changes to take place.
- Chinjut 4y ago
  Twitter's moderation, like every major such website, is a Kafkaesque nightmare with little transparency or review. It would all be fine if they just deleted individual posts. Then it'd be no big deal on an occasional bad call. But nuking accounts in this slipshod way is terrible.
firebaze 4y ago
Another Elon alias on HN revealed! /s
jsemrau 4y ago
Twitter IS a use case where relevant people post good insights. Yet, Twitter as a product lost focus many years ago what they want to be and for whom. The product has terrible discovery and search. Velocity is super-high so you are missing posts all the time (and people miss yours). And unless you have an audience already it is broken for 99% of the users for content distribution. Further, I am convinced that a lot of the reported "users" are copies of the same person behind it, bots, or apps. All of this was motivation that led into building finclout. Having identity/reputation managed on-chain IS a use case where blockchain makes sense. and is really important to understand if a source is credible or not. There is a lot of spam, fakes, and pumps on Twitter which makes most "social sentiment" ML models worthless.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
jeffbee 4y ago
This guy has personally contributed to building the Hell he now inhabits. He yammered about crypto - an outright scam - for years and now he's sad that his feed is full of crypto scammers. There's a meme template for this!
togaen 4y ago
Maybe twitter likes the spam. It gets people like Paul Graham to complain about it on twitter thereby generating more user engagement and ad revenue. Keep up the good work, Paul.
robswc 4y ago
I'm a casual twitter user (unfortunately) and the verification badge really is an issue. You see that way before you see the grey "actual name" and before that, you see the nickname which is basically the name of the impersonators target. It's pretty obvious when you read it with common sense but when you initially see it, it looks legit.
andrewmcwatters 4y ago
My first question was, "Who the hell is Vitalik?"
drusepth 4y ago
The crypto spam on Twitter has really exploded the past couple weeks in particular for me. Seems like every single day I now get multiple @-mention spam notifications from one-off accounts seemingly specializing in just mentioning hundreds/thousands (or more) of users in replies to crypto scams/tweets/offers/etc.
awinter-py 4y ago
Patti harrison gives an interview about getting kicked off of twitter for using the blue check system to play a prank on nilla wafers. 'There's such a thing as too little fraud' is a take I saw somewhere recently. Ben Franklin + Alexander Pope both used almanacs, a social media analog from their era, to fake the deaths of opponents (in Franklin's case it was an opposing almanac publisher whose death he predicted in his first issue).
already 4y ago
I searched “vitalik.eth” on Twitter and the search returned 100s of fake account with the name and his picture
hot_gril 4y ago
Most social media sites lack self-moderation, which leads to problems like this that aren't curable in the long term. Sure, Twitter shouldn't allow checkmarks to change names, but there will still be bots. Facebook of all things is really the cleanest, since your "friends" on there tend to at least be acquaintances IRL and most of what you see just comes from them, but it's gotten corrupted a bit over the years. I've been developing a site a bit like Twitter except for sharing links only. If it had millions of users (which would take a miracle), it wouldn't have these problems. There are no top accounts, trending topics, follower counts, algorithmic recommendations, etc. Instead, you just follow whoever you know personally or seriously care about, and if you like something, you repost it since there's no plain "like." So you can get links from many hops away, but it has to go through a friend. This establishes a self-moderated network similar to how people in real life behave. In closed beta, I've discovered a lot of interesting content (mostly news) that I otherwise wouldn't have, but the project has ways to go.
- wan_ala 4y ago
kredd 4y ago
A bit late to the discussion, but I have a couple of twitter accounts. One fairly well curated, the other one… not so well. Browsing my feed on the first one is actually fun! No spam, no bots. Given most of the people I follow aren’t big household names. The second account is basically crypto and OF spam everywhere, but that just follows the opposite kind people.
diebeforei485 4y ago
Verified accounts should be required to keep the same display name and handle. Changes should be limited to adding a hashtag at the end of the display name. Other changes should result in temporary loss of the verified badge until they undo the change. As for profile pictures, they should be using perceptual hashing to detect similar profile pictures. This isn't particularly hard anymore. They might already be using it to detect copyrighted content, or perhaps they can contribute to existing open-source libraries.

262 points by powera 4y ago

Try tweeting anything mentioning metamask.

YouTube has suddenly encountered a rash of “comment reply scam/spam” where if you reply to a famous YouTuber someone with the same profile picture will reply almost instantly with a generic thank you / won a prize type comment and try to get you to use telegram or discord. It’s all so pitiful. As for Twitter the check mark might actually be useful if it disappeared the moment you changed your “display name” but we can’t have that!

wnevets 4y ago
Games Nexus did an entire video [1] about it and even paid the scammer. Apparently the scammers heavily downvoted the video. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqPPWO7kWu4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqPPWO7kWu4
iLoveOncall 4y ago
> As for Twitter the check mark might actually be useful if it disappeared the moment you changed your “display name” but we can’t have that! Just requiring 2FA for checkmarked accounts and an ID confirmation to remove said 2FA would eliminate 90% of the scams already.
bko 4y ago
The worst thing is that the workflow to report spam has gotten a lot worse since the last 6 months. Now it takes 9 clicks 1. three dots 2. report spam 3. welcome message start report 4. who is this report for? myself, some specific group, everyone (??) 5. general info (attacked b/c of identity, harassed, spam, ... ) 6. how is he doing this? (Posting misleading or deceptive links, leading to scams, phishing, or other malicious links, +6 more similarly verbose) 7. yes continue 8. submit 9. done It used to be like 2 or 3 about 6 months ago but I remember after Musk started complaining they responded by somehow making it worse. Also most of the reports are centered around harassment or racist comments when 90% of the bad content on twitter most people deal with is straight up scams. There should just be a big this is spam button.
- drtz 4y ago
  My pessimistic view: making it too easy to report spam may highlight how much spam there actually is on Twitter. Something the company definitely does not want to do at the moment.
  - gcmac 4y ago
    I wonder if their A/B test showed that this was somehow "solving" the "spam of spam reports" problem. It would be fairy naive but I could envision a world where they tested this out, saw fewer (but more detailed) spam reports and concluded that the prior distribution of spam reports was itself not reliable (e.g overcounted the problem). This is obviously self-serving but seems like it may at least be a "consistent" world view where they aren't totally cynical.
    - bko 4y ago
      It's just bad UX and confusing. Consider this question "Who is this report for?". Here are the options: 1. Myself 2. Someone else or a specific group of people -- This Tweet is directed at or mentions someone else or a specific group of people — like racial or religious groups. Everyone on Twitter 3. This Tweet isn’t targeting a specific person or group, but it affects everyone on Twitter — like misleading info or sensitive content. For the same Vitalik spam tweet you see everywhere, I'm guessing 3, but its kind of weird question Then "Everyone on Twitter is being ..." 1. Attacked because of their identity 2. Slurs, misgendering, racist or sexist stereotypes, encouraging others to harass, sending hateful imagery Harassed or intimidated with violence 3. Sexual harassment, group harassment, insults or name calling, posting private info, threatening to expose private info, violent event denial, violent threats, celebration of violent acts 4. Spammed 5. Posting malicious links, misusing hashtags, fake engagement, repetitive replies, Retweets, or Direct Messages. Shown content related to or encouraged to self-harm 6. Shown misleading info 7. Offered tips or currency — or encouraged to send them — in a way that’s deceptive or promotes or causes harm I guess spammed, but I'm pretty sure its a malicious link and misleading, so either 4 or 5 or 6 Then, "How is ⁦@... doing this?" 1. Posting misleading or deceptive links, leading to scams, phishing, or other malicious links 2. Misusing hashtags, such as unrelated hashtags and large number of hashtags 3. Sending a lot of aggressive, unwanted, repetitive or unrelated replies, Retweets, or Direct Messages 4. Fake engagement, such as aggressively Retweeting or buying and selling Likes, replies, or other Twitter features 5. Using multiple accounts to interact or coordinate with other people to manipulate accounts, Tweets, or other Twitter features 6. Following and then unfollowing large numbers of accounts so to inflate follower count 7. Something else I guess its a deceptive link, but I'm not sure because I didn't click on it. I also didn't click 5 on the previous step which was "posting malicious links", I clicked spammed. But he's also using repetitive or unrelated replies so maybe 3 as well? And almost certainly the person running the scam is using multiple accounts. That's a lot of words to read every time, and I'm pretty sure it has changed since I started reporting stuff regularly.
geerlingguy 4y ago
I just got my channel added to an 'alpha' of their new spam prevention algorithm... and it seems to be working so far (fingers crossed). I was getting around 300 spam replies to comments on my videos per week up until the alpha started—now I'm getting 0. So maybe they finally cracked that nut, but I won't count my chickens before they're hatched. I still run YT-Spammer-Purge[1] daily, but it's come up dry for the past week now. [1] https://github.com/ThioJoe/YT-Spammer-Purge https://github.com/ThioJoe/YT-Spammer-Purge
badwolf 4y ago
Similarly on Instagram it's the sudden slew of "promote it on <spamaccount>" type comments. Dozens of them within minutes of posting anything.
- RicoElectrico 4y ago
  And "+18" profiles viewing your Stories, with links to shady sites in the bio. They're so similar to each other that manual rules would suffice to cull them, AI my ass.
Aunche 4y ago
I'm also seeing a lot of spam comments pretending to be organic conversation about the market, which eventually leads to you to a "financial advisor" with an oddly unique name that is easy to Google, which leads you to a sketchy website.
cwkoss 4y ago
> As for Twitter the check mark might actually be useful if it disappeared the moment you changed your “display name” but we can’t have that! That would be a very smart policy, but twitter is too afraid of inconveniencing psuedojournalist professional hand wringers and their pressing need to update their display names with the emoji that shows they Care about the important issue of the month. Or to be even more blasphemous, perhaps Twitter should hire humans to review changes to bluechecks' display names.
- lbriner 4y ago
  Then here's an idea. Have a profile picture and have a person picture. You can change one and not the other. You're welcome Twitter, no need to thank or pay me (unless you want to of course!)
asddubs 4y ago
youtube is a pit of spam in general. Basically any bigger video, every single comment that's even just somewhat high up either has a respond that says something like "check this out <video link>" or "see here <video link>", or a comment left by someone with a username along the lines of "click my profile picture for my pics" with a suggestive avatar

tenpies 4y ago

It has gotten so much worst to the point that I wonder if Twitter employees are trying to execute some sort of poison pill so that Musk does not purchase the company, and they can continue to amplify their agendas and squelch opposition.

aaronrobinson 4y ago
The other way around. He’s cited fake account levels and trying to get out of the deal.

meowface 4y ago

Naturally, the top reply under that is the exact same scam-spam in the screenshot.

mattgreenrocks 4y ago

Cynical me is surprised the "blue checkmark = credibility" thing is starting to crumble. (Actual me can't help smile a bit.) However, I don't know what they can do here. They set up the system where the users respond to blue checkmarks positively. Adding another layer of blue checkmark is confusing and silly, but having it be gamed is also not good.

cinntaile 4y ago
The solution is obvious, you get a golden checkmark if you're super verified.
- jeffrallen 4y ago
  Extra verified (EV). Worked great for TLS (eye roll).
Beltalowda 4y ago
The funniest part is that one of these spam accounts actually replied with the same spam facepalm. Lots of replies, all from what seem bot/spam accounts. The (verified) account bio is "Official Account of the Directorate of School Principals, School Supervisors, and Tendik, Directorate General of GTK, Ministry of Education and Culture, Research and Technology" (translated from Indonesian). It's probably a legit account that got compromised; tweets from a few days ago are all fine (and about Indonesian politics and the like). So basically, the problem isn't really with the blue checkmark as such; it's useful to verify this is an official government account rather than some random guy; the problem is this account got compromised somehow.
- lolinder 4y ago
  Compromised or not, the blue checkmark is completely meaningless if you can change display names and not have to re-verify your account. Profile pictures I can see allowing for convenience, but what is the blue checkmark supposed to be certifying if not the person's name?

illuminerdy 4y ago

I don't think you needed to include "The spam on". The statement works just as well without it.

ranger_danger 4y ago

People are outraged at kiwifarms and their users allegedly driving people to suicide, but twitter's "body count" is much higher than probably any other site. Where's the outrage for that??

the_doctah 4y ago
I'm confused, it sounds like you're asking for more censorship on Twitter, which is not even the subject at hand. Unless you're suggesting bots are killing people.
deleted 4y ago
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DanBC 4y ago
> Where's the outrage for that?? https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3137 https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3137 > As use of the internet has expanded there has been an increasing awareness that online content and activity can cause serious harm to users. There are growing levels of public concern about online content and activity that is lawful but potentially harmful. Whilst harmful content may fall short of amounting to a criminal offence, it can have damaging effects on individuals - creating toxic online environments and negatively impacting a user’s ability to express themself online.
- ranger_danger 4y ago
  I meant campaigns against twitter for all the abuse they host, and cloudflare for all the other messed up sites they continue to host, like monkey torture videos.

lantry 4y ago

sure, but one false positive and it's "I got banned from twitter for no reason! muh freedom of speech!" Moderation will never be perfect, and IMO it's better to err on the false negative side

eminence32 4y ago
Real humans being caught up in anti-spam measures would be much easier to stomach if there was a sane way to talk to a human at Twitter and get the ban reversed.

101008 4y ago

How did they get the blue checkmark on Twitter? It is really hard to get one honestly (I applied a few times showing that my "brand" was quoted/linked on Wikipedia and several large media outlets) - unless they are paying several thousands (which I don't think this is the case)

djbusby 4y ago
Yeah, my old account, for a business, valid trademark, etc - check box rejected :(
iLoveOncall 4y ago
It's a hacked account that got rebranded.
- MattGaiser 4y ago
  I am surprised you can rebrand without redoing verification.
  - MallocVoidstar 4y ago
    A lot of big name people will add small notes about important announcements to their display names (new book out, stuff like that) so preventing name changes entirely would be very unpopular.
    - bee_rider 4y ago
      This seems like it ought to be easy to work around. Like, verify a base name, and then give them a little space afterwards where they can add something. The displayed name is the combination of the two. They can even make it a different color to emphasize the announced thing.
      - snowwrestler 4y ago
        Changing the visible display name frequently is a significant part of Twitter culture. In a few weeks, tons of people will change their name to a “spooky” version for Halloween, for example. It’s not a feature Twitter will kill just because of a few scammers.

shadowgovt 4y ago

Honest question for people who still use Twitter: what keeps you on? I deleted my account half a decade ago and haven't missed it.

alexb_ 4y ago
I'm in communities that function completely off of Twitter. Leaving twitter = you now know nothing about what's going on.
JustSomeNobody 4y ago
I don't follow anyone who even hints at crypto. That alone eliminates 99.999% of s(p|c)am.
WA 4y ago
Some people post interesting things you can’t find elsewhere.
ljosifov 4y ago
People whose opinions I rate post write ideas that I find interesting. I use "Latest Tweets" timeline mostly - only sometimes check "Home" TL. Never follow any Topics or similar - strictly individual accounts. Block or mute annonimous and/or rude/ugly etc liberally.
d23 4y ago
I see essentially no spam because I don't follow accounts that would spam me or receive a lot of spam replies. The people I follow are interesting. That's about it.
- lanstin 4y ago
  Yeah, exactly, I love learning about geology (esp sedimentation) and maths and medieval history and a bit of philosophy and some software stuff and a little tech business and conservation biology and a lot of various Star Trek accounts and a varying amount of news or political accounts and so on. If someone starts posting too much, I have to unfollow. I block all accounts that show me a sponsored post, and make sure to only do time-based time line. It's excellent content and fast propagation of news. I most often will link into y combinator posts from tweets. The only spam I've seen is on #hashtag searches, especially #covid19 (with, in 2020 a ton of k-pop spam for some reason) and various crypto folks (with more spam in replying to true believers than sceptics, make of that what you will).

whywhywhywhy 4y ago

Twitter could combat it but doesn’t. The same “did you check this out? <YouTube link>” message has been in every popular tweet for months now.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago

Why do you use it then? Honest question.

NelsonMinar 4y ago

Here's a search for tweets from verified accounts offering this specific Ethereum scam: https://twitter.com/search?q=filter%3Averified%20%22giving%20away%2050%2C000%20ETH!%22&src=typed_query&f=live https://twitter.com/search?q=filter%3Averified%20%22giving%2...

TonyTrapp 4y ago
I wonder how some of those can be verified accounts at all. They appear to have been hijacked just hours ago, their original content and followers are still there. The rules for Twitter Verification say "Demonstrate your account has a follower count in the top .05% of active accounts located in the same geographic region" yet some of these accounts just have a few hundred followers. Surely 300 followers cannot be in the top .05% of active accounts in, say, Indonesia? Edit: The best one so far, replying to @POTUS: https://twitter.com/IYCKarnataka/status/1570126180791242753 https://twitter.com/IYCKarnataka/status/1570126180791242753
- georgiecasey 4y ago
  I wouldn't be surprised if someone responsible for verifying accounts in Indonesia took a bribe.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    What do you bet a KPM for some manager somewhere is number of new verified accounts?
- colatkinson 4y ago
  I don't think the follower count being that high is a hard requirement. The sentence in full: > Follower or Mention Count: If your account is detected to be in the top .05% follower or mention count for your geographic location, it may count towards notability evidence for certain categories. Emphasis mine. The other listed sources of "notability" are things like news coverage, IMDB references, and Google Trends. So for example, an elderly state senator who "never quite figured out the socials" would not have millions of followers, but would be eligible for verification because they are notable for other reasons. The follower count thing seems more like a bolster for influencers and such. They won't have industry references, given that they aren't really in an industry per se, and they won't probably won't end up on the front page of the NYT just for having lots of followers. But nonetheless, it's in the best interest of both the influencer and Twitter to avoid having phonies of the influencer promoting scams.

aaroninsf 4y ago

Idle question, I have always assumed screen name and badge are just-in-time, reflective of present account settings, modulo caching etc., and not pinned so to speak to their state at the time of a Tweet. It's got to be the case, or you could just keep flip-flopping and have a dialog with yourself that looked at a glance like an actual interchange (until the account handle was examined)...

shabbatt 4y ago

Unfortunately crypto has fueled this. I regularly see coinbase or binance profiles in the reply section of highly visible tweets.

MattGaiser 4y ago

I’m surprised you can change a verified account name and retain the verification. That seems like the biggest flaw.

orblivion 4y ago

Looks like the spammers noticed Paul's tweet https://twitter.com/kspstk_gtk/status/1570094371009069056 https://twitter.com/kspstk_gtk/status/1570094371009069056 lol

nneonneo 4y ago
It’s amusing to me that they end each fake reply with a string of four random letters. What better way to scream “I’m a bot”?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- dr_kiszonka 4y ago
  I wonder what these strings are. Some sort of an ID? Or maybe to make these tweets sufficiently different from each other to avoid triggering spam detection?
  - TremendousJudge 4y ago
    I'd put my money on the second one
  - jstarfish 4y ago
    I was impersonated on another medium recently. Appending some sort of hash to the end of every message was my first thought as a countermeasure. (Didn't end up implementing; easier to abandon the platform altogether and deny anything purportedly attributable to me.)
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
bitwize 4y ago
One of the bots is named AberBluehair. There's something very "how do you do, fellow young people" about that. HELLO. THIS IS MARY. I AM A HUMAN WITH SOFT SKIN. https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2000/01/28/move-over-hell https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2000/01/28/move-over-hell

AYBABTME 4y ago

[conspiracy theory hat on] what if Elon is pushing a spam campaign to support his argument in court? [/conspiracy theory hat on]

snowwrestler 4y ago
The level of reply spam on Twitter is irrelevant to the legal status of the merger agreement.
- bogwog 4y ago
  Relevant: https://www.techdirt.com/2022/07/25/if-someone-is-prattling-on-about-spam-on-twitter-and-how-that-helps-elon-musk-send-them-this-article/ https://www.techdirt.com/2022/07/25/if-someone-is-prattling-...
- LightG 4y ago
  But the prominence of the issue is. Wheel out a "whistle-blower" or two and Bob's your Uncle. Forgive me, there are enough cultish Elon worshippers around that I can easily give credence to this theory. In fact, on the balance of probability (given the fanatics and Musks powers), I would say it is actually the most reasonable explanation.
  - wyclif 4y ago
    It's really not about Elon Musk cultism. It's about the fact that he was right to question how many Twitter accounts were bots/spam. This is Musk's vindication.
DominoTree 4y ago
This has been going on far longer than any of his financial entanglement with Twitter, unfortunately.
SrslyJosh 4y ago
He waived due diligence, so too bad for him.
4y ago

michaelwww 4y ago

I find the lack of spam filtering tools Twitter provides us to be appalling. "vitalik.eth 50,000 Ethereum give away" is a well known example that keeps appearing from new accounts. I should be able to set filter. Right now I can only hide all content from the account, which keeps changing.

nevereveragain 4y ago
You can add keyword blocks instead of blocking the entire account. Isn't obvious, but it's there.
- michaelwww 4y ago
  Hey, learn something new every day How to use advanced muting options https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/advanced-twitter-mute-options https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/advanced-twitter-m...
seizethecheese 4y ago
You can definitely mute keywords
- mh- 4y ago
  FYI, they have to be exact phrase matches though. So you'll have to add permutations like "Ethereum giveaway" "Ethereum! give away".

skrowl 4y ago

Elon was right. WAAAAY more than < 10% of the users are bots.

gowld 4y ago
"Users" is a nonsense metric. Twitter's claim was always about monetization accuracy: that <10% of ad impressions are shown to bots.
bombcar 4y ago
It’s the real users who never post vs bots who obviously post.
LightG 4y ago
Simplistic conclusion. I'd argue you're buying into the hype.

ks2048 4y ago

I don't know if it's considered "spam", but another super-annoying thing is when you have to scroll past a whole page of "@downloadbot" or whatever those video-download bots are named. If you want to allow those kinds of things, why are they visible for everyone?

snowwrestler 4y ago

It’s worth noting that Paul posted this thought to Twitter. For as much as everyone complains about Twitter, there is obviously value in the product.

jdminhbg 4y ago
Absolutely. The Zuckerberg characterization of Twitter as "a clown car that fell into a gold mine" remains the most accurate.

system16 4y ago

Comically, when I view this tweet in my browser, at the top right in the "Relevant people" box that Twitter wants me to pay attention to and follow is _another_ fake yet verified Vitalik account. Honest question: what do Twitter's army of engineers and designers actually do every day? The site is slow, the UI is god awful, and the spam is - as this tweet points - appalling.

claytongulick 4y ago
Activism.
iLoveOncall 4y ago
> what do Twitter's army of engineers and designers actually do every day? They work on more dark patterns to force you to give your phone number or to create an account to read a tweet.
- cowtools 4y ago
  Yes, as someone who does international travel and frequently switches phone numbers, dealing with phone-based 2FA """security""" is a major problem for me. At least I will not waste time on their website. I just never give my phone number out anymore, no matter what because it will be used against me. Even google is trying to hold my account hostage, luckily they have an email forwarding feature so I no longer need to log in.
sbierwagen 4y ago
>and the spam is - as this tweet points - appalling. Incentives. If the expected value of a single spam message is in the micropennies, then you have to send enormous volumes of them, which can easily be detected by automated tools. Cryptocurrency changes this. Now an account hack can net the attacker millions of dollars. This means you can send many fewer messages and invest much more time in each of them.
madeofpalk 4y ago
Heh - in the Relevant people box I've started getting people who I've blocked, and have blocked me!

cwkoss 4y ago

The vitalik spoofing spam bots are such low hanging fruit. They should really just auto shadow ban anyone using his profile picture besides the real vitalik. (And probably elon musk too..) I wonder if its an issue of being tangled up in internal bureaucracy, or not wanting to implement one-off solutions to glaring issues that can't be generalized. Certainly a management failure somewhere.

bombcar 4y ago
They’d just change the image and name slightly to pass the filters.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  Literally 4chan 101.
- mattnewton 4y ago
  Still making it so easy that they can have literally his name and photo with a blue check mark seems sloppy to me?
- cwkoss 4y ago
  There are a number of well established image similarity algorithms that could be used past simple equality.
iudqnolq 4y ago
I suspect it's because there are many completely different Twitter "communities". The obvious stuff you see all the time is completely different from the low hanging fruit I'd list off. I do wish they'd ban blue emojis at the start and end of display names. I see that all the time logged in or logged out.
rajeshp1986 4y ago
what if real Vitalik decides to put the picture of a dog on his profile pic? It would effectively shadow ban every user who has a dog picture.
4y ago

duxup 4y ago

A twitter account I signed up for a while back was immediately followed by someone who claimed to live in the city my zip code falls in and described themself as "a former libtard who saw the light". Followed by the exact posts you would expect, including odd local location name dropping. It was not a great start.

hn_throwaway_99 4y ago

Not being a big Twitter user, I didn't understand the whole "blue checkmark verified" scam, which works like this: 1. There are a host of requirements needed to get the blue check: https://help.twitter.com/en/managing-your-account/about-twitter-verified-accounts https://help.twitter.com/en/managing-your-account/about-twit... 2. However, once an account gets the blue check, the owner is free to change the profile pic and display name, and the blue check doesn't go away. 3. So the scam is that some bad guy buys a previously verified account, changes the profile pic and display name to someone else famous, then uses it to phish. #2 is colossally stupid, and is trivial to prevent (lots of dating sites require profile changes and pic changes to be reviewed before going live). Apparently this has been going on a long time so is baffling to me.

godelski 4y ago
About once a week I get a mass message from a random twitter account with extremely clear spam (they even leave the group message after they send it!). They are often centered around crypto. I don't know how they are this bad because a Naive Bayesian Classifier could block this stuff.
bombcar 4y ago
Twitter users love changing their profile picture/name to support the current cause of the moment so much that it’s become a meme. Changing that would piss off their active posters.
- pawelduda 4y ago
  Pretty simple to solve - change your profile pic/name, lose blue checkmark until you get verified again.
  - badwolf 4y ago
    This is kind of how Scruff (gay dating app) works. Change your profile pic? Lose your verified status and have to go thru verification again.
  - 4y ago

paxys 4y ago

I'd prefer outright crypto scams over all the "There are many ways to improve your life. Here are 30 best ones" threads that have taken over my feed over the last few months. PLEASE give me a way to turn that off.

Finnucane 4y ago
There is a way. It's pretty obvious if you think about it.

Aaronstotle 4y ago

Twitter and Instagram seem to be overloaded with bots. In my Twitter DMs I get 5-10 messages per day from clear crypto-scams, and under posts from high profile people there are loads of bots. Instagram is no better, bots comment some obvious scam statement "Who wants to see me naked" with 140 likes on a post that was just created. Instagram doesn't want to address the problem because it gives them fake "user" numbers.

leobg 4y ago
Dude, it’s 5 percent. ;)
- LightG 4y ago
  I would wager it's much less. This is only a problem for certain blue checks. The problem is thus amplified because these big dawgs are moaning about it. Forgive me for not caring. This is like King Charles the 3rd complaining about his dripping pen (true current news story). I'm sure it incredibly annoying to him but to the rest of people it's laughable. I'll accept that it's a problem for followers of these big dawgs. But maybe there's a lesson in there somewhere.......
  - BitwiseFool 4y ago
    >"This is like King Charles the 3rd complaining about his dripping pen (true current news story). I'm sure it incredibly annoying to him but to the rest of people it's laughable." Given the enormous amount of stress and pressure he is currently under, not just as the new King, but also having just had his mother die, I'm impressed at his composure. I suspect most of us would have snapped and shown far greater emotion.
    - IntelMiner 4y ago
      He could just abdicate the throne, instead of being the spoiled wretch he is (British Monarchy is the only time calling ones self a "Republican" is palatable thanks to the Americans)

ethotool 4y ago

Isn’t this one of the reasons why Elon Musk was interested in acquiring Twitter in the first place? To improve various aspects of the platform as a privately owned company and turn it more into a town square..? Nobody who is mentally all there has ever claimed that Twitter is perfect. It’s just weird to me that everyone is acting surprised when the truth is Twitter has been getting hate since day one..

markdown 4y ago
> Isn’t this one of the reasons why Elon Musk was interested in acquiring Twitter in the first place? No, that's one of his "stated" reasons. His actual reason is unknown.
squidbeak 4y ago
Fair complaint isn't hate.

LightG 4y ago

It's bad for blue checks, I've never had an issue! Forgive me for not being that sympathetic. Interesting how it's becoming a major issue now (I mean, it has always has been for big accounts) since the Musky Douchey Hypeman requires it to be a major issue in the upcoming court case. Personally, advertise yourself with the stench of manure and expect horseflies.

bambax 4y ago

It's unlikely that PG suddenly discovered Twitter spam problem. Sounds like he's cultivating Musk, or at the very least, trying to signal that he supports him. A couple of weeks ago, Matt Levine predicted that would happen: > If you have something to do with Twitter, or you know something about Twitter, or you are in the business of counting Twitter bots, then you should take a few minutes and ask yourself: Well, do I know anything about Twitter doing any massive frauds? If you do… look, I don’t know exactly what you can do with that. (...) Still. I just have a vague general sense that saving the richest person in the world $44 billion is a good career move. > So you should expect that, over the next month or two, as Musk’s trial date with Twitter approaches, people will be popping up to say “oh sure Twitter is a fraud, massive fraud, totally, I have proof, Elon, call me.” https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-08-23/amc-goes-ape https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-08-23/amc-go...

SrslyJosh 4y ago
> Sounds like he's cultivating Musk, or at the very least, trying to signal that he supports him. Well, Musk waived due diligence, so... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
barnbuilder 4y ago
Yes he probably knew about Twitter's pervasive spam problem before but today has been a particularly bad day, as spammers are deploying a large number of hijacked verified accounts to impersonate the Ethereum founder coinciding with a major network change happening today. While all spam is bad, scams posted from a fake "verified" account are particularly odious.
jdminhbg 4y ago
> It's unlikely that PG suddenly discovered Twitter spam problem. It is, he's been tweeting about it constantly prior to the Musk acquisition.

DominoTree 4y ago

Similar all over Facebook as well - I've reported hundreds of scams using the exact same verbiage and images in sponsored posts, purporting to be Tesla or SpaceX or Amazon or so-forth selling new crypto tokens, using hacked verified pages. Would be trivial to detect if they cared. But beyond simply not caring, they're actually making money.

qwertox 4y ago

I can't use Twitter, I don't know how to use it. Sometimes I do these "latest" searches in order to see if GitHub or something else is down, or when there's a breaking news of worldwide relevance in order to get to know what's happening. But even these searches are 95% useless junk tweets in between of some relevant tweets. The "following"-thing hasn't worked for me for around a decade, there's just too much garbage in the stream or main page or whatever it is called. And for a couple of months now I've noticed that when I use it on a device which is not logged into Twitter, usually because a Reddit post leads me to it, it has agressive Instagram-like tactics in wanting you to log in or sign up and in that state has the same aggressive, unwelcoming vibe which Pinterest has. Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter.

smoe 4y ago

My problem with twitter is not even user spam, but twitters own engagement spam, it seems to be impossible to just see the content of people I follow I recently signed up first time after like 8 years to follow a handful of interesting accounts. But only maybe 20% of stuff I see is actually from them, the rest is all suggestions by twitter what people/topics I should follow or what people that the people I follow follow posted, etc. And there only seems to be ways to show "fewer" of something, not get rid of it altogether. Completely useless. I reckon there are third party apps and browser extensions to filter this, but since I don't care about those few accounts I follow enough either, I couldn't be bothered and deleted my account again.

knocknock 4y ago
if you switch from the "Home" timeline to the "Latest Tweets" timeline, you should only see things from people you follow.
fknorangesite 4y ago
You can switch between "Home" (default, what you're describing) and "Latest" (what you want) feeds. I'm not sure about a mobile app, if that's what you're using, but on web at least it's the stars-icon-button in the top right of the feed.
- patch_cable 4y ago
  Mobile app works the same way. Twitter is basically unusable to me without changing this setting.
mzs 4y ago
I think twitter wants you to make a list for that.
dotnet00 4y ago
The only way Twitter is usable to me is using the 'Better Twitter' browser extension, which filters out most of their recommendation stuff.
4y ago

andrew_ 4y ago

Depending on the circles one frequents on Twitter, "blue checks" are trusted and respected, or mocked and distrusted. There's still no clear messaging on what it means, grants are seemingly arbitrary anymore. It's quite the debacle.

joshstrange 4y ago

Twitter is unusable unless you are using a third-party client (which they don't give full access to). I sometimes tweet into the void about issues but rarely read twitter anymore except during something like an Apple event when I want to see what a handful of people are saying. Scrolling through my main feed (on the official web/client) is utter garbage. Sponsored-this, suggested-that, your-friend-liked, your-friend-also-follows, etc. Kill me. I want to read tweets from the specific people I follow, I don't need suggestions, I don't need the algorithm, I sure as hell don't care about followers-of-followers-type shit. The notifications I get from Twitter are also terrible, like I've given Twitter more than enough info over the last decade+ that it shouldn't be showing me certain suggested tweets (or whatever they call that block of random tweets they inject under a tweet I'm looking at). Twitter, like most large tech companies, astounds me. I literally have no clue what their thousands of employees/"engineers" do everyday. I work at a tiny company (<15 total, 6 developers) and it feels like we make way more forward progress in a month than twitter has in the last decade. For over 6 months they completely broke their browser notifications because someone renamed their Twitter account to "tweet" and so browser notifications would open that user's account instead of the tweet it was being linked to (the URL the browser would open would be something like /tweet?id=XXXXXXXX). It's fucking ametuer hour over there and they are wasting their time on adding things like podcasts to Twitter? They doesn't deserve to succeed.

NoFactualActual 4y ago

I'm not sure it's "spam" if you have to find it. Surely twitter ads are far closer to email spam than someone impersonating another person.

barnbuilder 4y ago
The spammers impersonate famous people and then spam the replies of other famous people, for example the fake Vitalik in the OP is a reply to one of paulg's tweets. If you read the threads under certain people's tweets (or anyone's tweets containing cryptocurrency related keywords) you will have no choice but to wade through copious amounts of this muck.
- NoFactualActual 4y ago
  I'm still not quite clear what qualifies this as "spam" given that you need to opt into viewing the tweets. It seems like a clear-cut case of impersonation. Spam is an entirely different concept that cannot be reduced to "I don't want to see this content" (which would, again, necessarily include ads...). Granted, I would consider 99% of what pg would likely consider "legitimate" cryptocurrency content to be de-facto spam, but that's just a part of being on the internet at this point. The problem he raises seems negligible in comparison to the other commercial content that pollutes twitter.

lifefeed 4y ago

If you mute "NFT" and various crypto keywords you won't see 99% of the spam. It's a not a scalable solution, but it works well for me.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

jpe90 4y ago

Seems like a pretty decent time to exit social media entirely, I think.

jononomo 4y ago

I got banned for life from Twitter for tweeting "sheesh, I'd kill myself if I was still programming in java after age 50" (or something like that -- I've since deleted the tweet and can't remember the wording, but the gist is correct.) This was viewed as "encouraging self harm" so I got a lifetime ban. Yes, it was my second offense. A week or two earlier I had tweeted "I wish anti-vaxxers would go jump off a bridge". So that was two strikes and I got the lifetime ban instantly -- within less than two seconds -- while also being informed that my lifetime ban had been "after careful review". In any case, I'm a real human being and I can't use Twitter anymore. So the bots run free, but my obviously human account got a lifetime ban for tweets that could not possibly be seriously construed as dangerous. Honestly, the tweets are barely noteworthy. Also, I had something like 28 followers and I was little more than an occasional reply guy. Also, aside from the bots, the amount of absolutely ridiculously bad taste stuff I see tweeted that doesn't result in a lifetime ban is astonishing. Supposedly I can appeal my ban but I haven't done so because I'm dead certain that if I do I will just get an even more solid lifetime ban, along with all my personal details stored in their list of atrocious actors. I guess I'm holding out for Elon Musk to be forced to buy Twitter and for some changes to take place.

Chinjut 4y ago
Twitter's moderation, like every major such website, is a Kafkaesque nightmare with little transparency or review. It would all be fine if they just deleted individual posts. Then it'd be no big deal on an occasional bad call. But nuking accounts in this slipshod way is terrible.

firebaze 4y ago

Another Elon alias on HN revealed! /s

jsemrau 4y ago

Twitter IS a use case where relevant people post good insights. Yet, Twitter as a product lost focus many years ago what they want to be and for whom. The product has terrible discovery and search. Velocity is super-high so you are missing posts all the time (and people miss yours). And unless you have an audience already it is broken for 99% of the users for content distribution. Further, I am convinced that a lot of the reported "users" are copies of the same person behind it, bots, or apps. All of this was motivation that led into building finclout. Having identity/reputation managed on-chain IS a use case where blockchain makes sense. and is really important to understand if a source is credible or not. There is a lot of spam, fakes, and pumps on Twitter which makes most "social sentiment" ML models worthless.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

jeffbee 4y ago

This guy has personally contributed to building the Hell he now inhabits. He yammered about crypto - an outright scam - for years and now he's sad that his feed is full of crypto scammers. There's a meme template for this!

togaen 4y ago

Maybe twitter likes the spam. It gets people like Paul Graham to complain about it on twitter thereby generating more user engagement and ad revenue. Keep up the good work, Paul.

robswc 4y ago

I'm a casual twitter user (unfortunately) and the verification badge really is an issue. You see that way before you see the grey "actual name" and before that, you see the nickname which is basically the name of the impersonators target. It's pretty obvious when you read it with common sense but when you initially see it, it looks legit.

andrewmcwatters 4y ago

My first question was, "Who the hell is Vitalik?"

drusepth 4y ago

The crypto spam on Twitter has really exploded the past couple weeks in particular for me. Seems like every single day I now get multiple @-mention spam notifications from one-off accounts seemingly specializing in just mentioning hundreds/thousands (or more) of users in replies to crypto scams/tweets/offers/etc.

awinter-py 4y ago

Patti harrison gives an interview about getting kicked off of twitter for using the blue check system to play a prank on nilla wafers. 'There's such a thing as too little fraud' is a take I saw somewhere recently. Ben Franklin + Alexander Pope both used almanacs, a social media analog from their era, to fake the deaths of opponents (in Franklin's case it was an opposing almanac publisher whose death he predicted in his first issue).

already 4y ago

I searched “vitalik.eth” on Twitter and the search returned 100s of fake account with the name and his picture

hot_gril 4y ago

Most social media sites lack self-moderation, which leads to problems like this that aren't curable in the long term. Sure, Twitter shouldn't allow checkmarks to change names, but there will still be bots. Facebook of all things is really the cleanest, since your "friends" on there tend to at least be acquaintances IRL and most of what you see just comes from them, but it's gotten corrupted a bit over the years. I've been developing a site a bit like Twitter except for sharing links only. If it had millions of users (which would take a miracle), it wouldn't have these problems. There are no top accounts, trending topics, follower counts, algorithmic recommendations, etc. Instead, you just follow whoever you know personally or seriously care about, and if you like something, you repost it since there's no plain "like." So you can get links from many hops away, but it has to go through a friend. This establishes a self-moderated network similar to how people in real life behave. In closed beta, I've discovered a lot of interesting content (mostly news) that I otherwise wouldn't have, but the project has ways to go.

wan_ala 4y ago

kredd 4y ago

A bit late to the discussion, but I have a couple of twitter accounts. One fairly well curated, the other one… not so well. Browsing my feed on the first one is actually fun! No spam, no bots. Given most of the people I follow aren’t big household names. The second account is basically crypto and OF spam everywhere, but that just follows the opposite kind people.

diebeforei485 4y ago

Verified accounts should be required to keep the same display name and handle. Changes should be limited to adding a hashtag at the end of the display name. Other changes should result in temporary loss of the verified badge until they undo the change. As for profile pictures, they should be using perceptual hashing to detect similar profile pictures. This isn't particularly hard anymore. They might already be using it to detect copyrighted content, or perhaps they can contribute to existing open-source libraries.