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>Musk said “It’s the only way I can think of to combat vast armies of bots.” With so many of these billionaires and CEOs it is becoming impossible to tell whet
by slg 3y ago
>Musk said “It’s the only way I can think of to combat vast armies of bots.”
With so many of these billionaires and CEOs it is becoming impossible to tell whether they are transparently lying or complete idiots. Just admit you need the revenue and you want people to put a card on file to lower the bar for future financial transactions. Charging for a service doesn't eliminate bots, it just shifts the financial break even point a little. If that is truly the only solution Twitter has, that is a huge indictment of his and his team's intelligence.
EDIT: To expand on why this clearly isn't targeting bots, this only applies to new users. It therefore does nothing regarding all the bots currently on the platform. It is clear that they don't want to chase off existing users which applies to both real users and bots.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- stevehawk 3y agoI love to mock Elon but even I am inclined to agree with him. It seems like the only other solution is something like Google's Web Environment Integrity thing, which scares me. The best/easiest solution is to make it more expensive for the botters to play the game,
- e2le 3y agoAttestation of personhood would be another possible solution. Might even be more effective given the cost of each new key ($10+). https://blog.cloudflare.com/introducing-cryptographic-attestation-of-personhood/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/introducing-cryptographic-attest...
- hcurtiss 3y agoI'd way rather pay a dollar.
- bccdee 3y agoNah. Twitter never had this much of a bot problem before Elon bought it, which is a big clue as to what's actually gone wrong: He laid off all the moderators and all the staff who were training the automated bot detection algorithms. Extremely formulaic spam which would have been instantly flagged a couple years ago just piles up in my notifications.
- ElongatedMusket 3y agoIt absolutely had a bot problem before! What Twitter were you using?
- pixxel 3y agoDismiss comments that start with ‘Nah.’
- carlosjobim 3y agoI've never seen a good quality comment starting with "Nah.", where did it come from and why did it become viral?
- rsynnott 3y ago> never had this much of a bot problem ... How did you read this as meaning it never had a bot problem? They're claiming that it had _less_ of a bot problem, which certainly _feels_ true.
- carlosjobim 3y agoDoes the difference matter, when the place was completely infested already before?
- bccdee 3y agoIt was never a problem for me before and it's a problem for me now. That difference matters immensely to my experience of the platform.
- spondylosaurus 3y agoThere are for sure other bot management strategies out there (Web Environment Integrity is strictly hypothetical for now, iirc) but the problem is that those strategies cost money, and often quite a bit. Which, I guess "pay $1 to sign up" is _also_ a strategy that costs money, but that cost gets passed to users :P Honestly though, $1 almost seems too low to be effective in that regard, at least relative to the specific risk/reward of Twitter. For a small forum or something, sure... but if you were interested in running automated Twitter accounts, and you knew for sure that you wouldn't get caught, $100/year to run 100 accounts is absolutely worth it so long as those accounts bring in some kind of money via whatever scam/spam/promotion crap you're running.
- delecti 3y agoAnd on top of everything, the bot problem seems worse than ever in the past year. I'm noticing it more even despite spending less time there because the top replies to large accounts are all so worthless now. I have to imagine the problem is even worse for people spending more time there.
- ToValueFunfetti 3y agoIt must shift it by a lot, right? I would think the cost of a twitter bot would be in the neighborhood of a fraction of a cent/year.
- delecti 3y agoA bot on its own doesn't cost Twitter much directly, but enough bots costs Twitter users.
- ToValueFunfetti 3y agoI mean for the botters. $1K vs <$10 to run a thousand bots for a year should have a dramatic effect on the risk/reward ratio.
- delecti 3y agoAhh, got it. Yeah, I suppose it could be a notable increase in the per-bot cost. Though considering each Twitter account typically needs to be "legitimized" with a phone number, it might not actually be that much of a multiplier.
- rewmie 3y ago> Just admit you need the revenue (...) Here's a reminder that Forbes reported that Elon Musk's Twitter is spiraling into bankruptcy, and things are so bad that Musk is even unable to pay rent for their offices. https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2023/07/03/twitter-faces-lawsuit-over-unpaid-office-fees-again/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2023/07/03/twitter...
- tiffanyh 3y agoAt $1/year, this isn’t a revenue play because after card and/or platform fees - it won’t amount to much at all. However, account signup will definitely drop considerably, because that’s a pretty big barrier for most users. So I’m actually inclined to say, this probably is a strategy purely to combat bots.
- slg 3y ago>At $1/year, this isn’t a revenue play because after card and/or platform fees - it won’t amount to much at all. It isn't purely about the $1 per year revenue. It is about having a customer credit card on file which reduces friction for every future situation in which the user is charged which increases future revenue.
- Scipio_Afri 3y agoIt’s not staying $1 forever. You subscribe and then they boil the frog with upping it to $2, or higher
- lapcat 3y ago> after card and/or platform fees > It is about having a customer credit card It's interesting that you mention platform fees, because if this subscription plan is available in the App Store, then Twitter wouldn't have your credit card on file, Apple would. Indeed, if new users get a paywall in the app, then I think Apple's rules would require the subscription to be available in the App Store.
- earthnail 3y agoA customer credit card is yet another barrier for bots. Since the finance industry is so strictly regulated, you can imagine that it'll actually be quite hard to get fresh credit cards for your bots at scale.
- userinanother 3y agoIt’s not there are services they are available to everyone they aren’t even illegal or grey market. Amex and citi offer em
- rpgbr 3y ago>With so many of these billionaires and CEOs it is becoming impossible to tell whether they are transparently lying or complete idiots. Why not both?
- zappb 3y agoSo bots just need to earn more than a dollar per year in revenue to break even? That’s every scam bot in existence!
- throw2022110401 3y agoIt's even better than that, for just $1/year they can get their bot accounts certified as a "real human".
- mgiannopoulos 3y agoI doubt they will give a blue check to these accounts.
- mgiannopoulos 3y agoThey will also require a unique card number and a unique phone number. What is the cost of these?
- xboxnolifes 3y ago> EDIT: To expand on why this clearly isn't targeting bots, this only applies to new users. It therefore does nothing regarding all the bots currently on the platform. It is clear that they don't want to chase off existing users which applies to both real users and bots. Existing bots can be slowly banned off. The problem with bots, on any platform, is their ability to just make a new account instantly.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- wendyshu 3y agoHow would you solve the bot problem?