5 ms·

Just the cost of doing business. They make more than enough to afford $7/month.

codetrotter 3y ago
> They make more than enough to afford $7/month. Sure. But I would expect bot operators to have a vast array of accounts. If you have 250,000 accounts and you paid for a blue checkmark for 10,000 of those accounts. That would be $70,000 per month.
- unshavedyak 3y ago
  It's more a question on how much they make per account though, right? It's either above or below the profit line on average. Or they've found a way to reduce costs, like stolen cards or owning Twitter (hah).
  - codetrotter 3y ago
    > a question on how much they make per account though, right? Idk, but intuitively I would think that the profits they get are spread over a great number of accounts. If 98% of your spam earned income comes from a single account, that would make you very vulnerable to losing all of your income if that single account is banned. If on the other hand, 80% of your income comes from 10,000 accounts then it doesn’t matter if 1 or 10 or 100 or 1,000 of those accounts get banned. You’ll still have the income from the remaining 9,999 or 9,990 or 9,900 or 9,000 accounts. And you’ll make a bunch of new accounts all the time so that for all of those account of yours that are banned it’s not really significantly reducing the total number of accounts under your control either. Of course, I could be wrong and it could be that they have a handful of accounts that make all of the income and all of the other accounts only serve to fake engagement for those few accounts so that those few accounts get boosted and seen by people. I’m not in the spam making “business” so I don’t know how it actually works.
- ethanbond 3y ago
  Don't need a vast array of accounts if you're not getting banned.
- asadotzler 3y ago
  You only need 10,000 accounts if you expect bans. Bluechecks don't get banned so you only need 1,000 not 10,000 (made up numbers) and in that world, you just steel some crypto to fund a thousand credit cards (or similar) and you're gold, forever because Twitter won't ban paying customers -- it's too desperate for that.
cubefox 3y ago
(I think it costs 8, not 7 dollars.) The surprising thing is that apparently the bot operators make more than $8 _per account_ on average, which is surprising to me.

> They make more than enough to afford $7/month. Sure. But I would expect bot operators to have a vast array of accounts. If you have 250,000 accounts and you paid for a blue checkmark for 10,000 of those accounts. That would be $70,000 per month.

unshavedyak 3y ago
It's more a question on how much they make per account though, right? It's either above or below the profit line on average. Or they've found a way to reduce costs, like stolen cards or owning Twitter (hah).
- codetrotter 3y ago
  > a question on how much they make per account though, right? Idk, but intuitively I would think that the profits they get are spread over a great number of accounts. If 98% of your spam earned income comes from a single account, that would make you very vulnerable to losing all of your income if that single account is banned. If on the other hand, 80% of your income comes from 10,000 accounts then it doesn’t matter if 1 or 10 or 100 or 1,000 of those accounts get banned. You’ll still have the income from the remaining 9,999 or 9,990 or 9,900 or 9,000 accounts. And you’ll make a bunch of new accounts all the time so that for all of those account of yours that are banned it’s not really significantly reducing the total number of accounts under your control either. Of course, I could be wrong and it could be that they have a handful of accounts that make all of the income and all of the other accounts only serve to fake engagement for those few accounts so that those few accounts get boosted and seen by people. I’m not in the spam making “business” so I don’t know how it actually works.
ethanbond 3y ago
Don't need a vast array of accounts if you're not getting banned.
asadotzler 3y ago
You only need 10,000 accounts if you expect bans. Bluechecks don't get banned so you only need 1,000 not 10,000 (made up numbers) and in that world, you just steel some crypto to fund a thousand credit cards (or similar) and you're gold, forever because Twitter won't ban paying customers -- it's too desperate for that.

cubefox 3y ago

(I think it costs 8, not 7 dollars.) The surprising thing is that apparently the bot operators make more than $8 _per account_ on average, which is surprising to me.