7 ms·
Want to sway an election? Here’s how much fake online accounts cost
- haunter 11mo agoNext one to look out for: 2026 Hungary. Fidesz is basically a russian backdoor in the EU and they will do everything to stay in power. https://telex.hu/english/2025/12/11/most-hungarians-fear-russian-interference-in-upcoming-elections-survey-shows https://telex.hu/english/2025/12/11/most-hungarians-fear-rus... They are also doing everything to bypass the no-political-ads-on-facebook ban https://telex.hu/english/2025/10/29/despite-the-ban-fidesz-continues-to-advertise-on-facebook-with-its-digital-civic-circles-freely https://telex.hu/english/2025/10/29/despite-the-ban-fidesz-c...
- spiderfarmer 11mo ago[flagged]
- nradov 11mo agoI logged into X right now and saw zero racist fear mongering or Nazi propaganda. You're probably following the wrong type of accounts.
- an0malous 11mo agoNetwork effects are powerful, it’s still the “town square” of the world
- flipgimble 11mo agoIt’s more accurately the “truck stop bathroom wall” of the world under new management.
- nomel 11mo agoTo be fair, the world is a truck stop bathroom, on average.
- Gud 11mo agoNot really. It’s a beautiful place.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- nomel 11mo agoyou should travel more. you'll find the actual average truck stop bathroom (i mean a truck stop, the kind that truckers stop at), with warm running water, and electricity, is a first world luxury. remember, the average income of the world is $9k/year. truckstop bathrooms aren't so bad. something like Love's are NICE.
- Gud 11mo agoI travel 300 days/year
- reactordev 11mo agoDubious claim now
- Forgeties79 11mo agoTown squares have an implied equal access to the floor. Twitter favors certain political and social ideologies.
- nathanaldensr 11mo agoNo, it's not 100% anything. The content you're looking at is what you see.
- amitav1 11mo agoI don't know why you're getting downvoted for this, but it's the same thing for me. The For You tab is a cesspool, but if you stick to the Following tab and unfollow anybody who says pretty much anything political, it's actually a pretty nice platform.
- earthnail 11mo agoReads a bit like “nah if you ignore the main streets and just walk on the paths that you like you’re safe from crime in your neighbourhood.” I find it crazy that we accept this madness on social media.
- irishcoffee 11mo ago[flagged]
- vkou 11mo agoWe don't accept it on the street either, and if you think that's what Main Street looks like, you either live in Memphis, an active warzone, or you need to turn off the telly.
- irishcoffee 11mo ago[flagged]
- Cornbilly 11mo agoNah. I live in Baltimore. It’s really not. Try not living in your algorithms.
- mettamage 11mo agoI've met Hungarian people in the Netherlands and they're doing everything they can to become Dutch. One Hungarian even speaks fluent with no accent, and that is quite a feat. I think it's quite unfortunate as it will mean that Hungary will become less pro EU, simply because the really pro EU people (that are also highly educated) seem to be going out of the country according to my anecdata. It's n = 2 to be fair, but I think it's enough for it to warrant some more research since I am simply stumbling across this group of people, I'm not actively seeking it out.
- enaaem 11mo agoHungarian population have been declining for decades [1]. Hungary has already lost 5% of their population since 2010. For comparison their neighbour the Czech Republic has been growing [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Hungary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Hungary [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_Czech_Republic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_Czech_Repu...
- mettamage 11mo agoWow... I guess that plausibly explains why I see an n = 2 without looking for it.
- jasonwatkinspdx 11mo agoFor what it's worth I had a conversation with someone in the same situation just the other day. They have a Hungarian passport but currently live in the Netherlands. They're not thrilled with the prospect of having to nationalize as Dutch, just due to all the bureaucracy, but they're getting the ball rolling now vs waiting to see how things pan out.
- roenxi 11mo ago[flagged]
- gherkinnn 11mo agoDoubt it. Appeasing hasn't worked. I don't know what would, but polishing Putin's shoes doesn't help. As for the US, least they have the chance to oust their emperor in three years.
- ordinaryradical 11mo agoOf course it is in their interest. The problem is that Russia only knows how to bully, oppress, or violently interfere with their neighbors. You cannot get along with a tiger who only regards you as a meal.
- roenxi 11mo ago[flagged]
- hkpack 11mo ago> Russia is one of the few powers who's borders have retreated in my lifetime What part of russian border retreated in your lifetime?
- jazzyjackson 11mo agoSuppose they're conflating Soviet Union with Russia
- nephihaha 11mo agoChechnya did briefly.
- machomaster 11mo agoWell, Putin did border agreements with China and gave them territory no so long ago. I am sure "Putin is a foreign agent working against the interests of Russia and Russians (killing them by literal millions)" is not the response he waited to counter his narrative of "Putin defending poor Russia". :-)
- Razengan 11mo ago> Fidesz is basically a russian backdoor I love (hate) this: Western rich people are billionaires. Russian rich people are oligarchs. Western-backed leaders are democratic, progressive etc. Others are backdoors. China is tricky because they make our iPhones. For now ---- Meanwhile, there's almost nothing on the news or social spaces about how indigenous populations are still fighting for independence from Western colonizers, such as New Caledonia, an amazing place that I was planning to visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6S1AFh88PE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6S1AFh88PE (I don't know where else to mention this, this conversation seemed close enough to be relevant)
- pixl97 11mo agoRussia is an interesting case as it has a president for life (China has gone this way too) and if your billions aren't available to said president you fall out a windows. The US is diving towards an oligarchy but I'm not seeing our billionaires fall out a window or disappearing when they say the wrong thing.
- raincole 11mo agoYeah because in the US the billionaires actually run the country.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- ChadNauseam 11mo agoI wish that were true but it's not. If billionaires ran the country we wouldn't be starting trade wars and restricting immigration.
- raincole 11mo agoDuring trading war the US stock skyrocketed. We live in an era where the wealthiest are made by devaluing fiat and moving the purchase power from average citizens to the richest ones. Creating value, if people are still doing that, is mere a byproduct now.
- stefantalpalaru 11mo ago[dead]
- jsnell 11mo agoThe _Science_ paper linked is paywalled, is anyone aware of a preprint? I find it a bit curious that they've chosen to use SMS verifications as a proxy for the difficulty of creating an account, when there are similar marketplaces for selling the actual end product of bulk-created accounts. Was there some issue with that kind of data? SMS verification is just one part of the anti-bulk account puzzle, for both the attacker and defender.
- lysace 11mo agoI have witnessed obvious and systematic synthetic upvotes of HN posts. Over and over. I don't think the site has enough protections in place. Maybe have YC invest in some startups combatting this using machine learning? (Given the focus of HN it's typically some product being pushed, though. Not a politician.)
- Nasrudith 11mo agoIt is machine learning, not machine telepathy or machine precognition. Without causality you just automate superstition.
- lysace 11mo ago[flagged]
- Noumenon72 11mo agoYou should delete the bonus content from this post too because you started with a good point that doesn't deserve to get deleted for irrelevant and confessed-intentional spam.
- lysace 11mo agoInsightful. Thank you.
- gyrate 11mo ago[dead]
- alecco 11mo agoHacked voting machines are a problem... unless our guys do it. Fake online accounts are a problem... unless our guys do it. Totalitarian measures like persecuting people for social media posts and forcing digital id are a problem... unless our guys are in power. It was a good run for democracy. What was it, 200 years? I wonder comes is next. Techno-feudalism? Well, I'm sure it won't be a problem as long as it's our guys.
- the_gastropod 11mo agoHow is this little "both sides bad" rant related to the article at all?
- alecco 11mo ago[flagged]
- the_gastropod 11mo ago> if the post were about ballot stuffing by the Democrats with irrefutable evidence like I've seen That's incredible. You're not even American, and have seen irrefutable evidence of "the Democrats" participating in blatant electoral fraud? Why haven't you shared this? There's no shortage of literal billionaires who'd reward you handsomely for such proof! Beyond this, why I constantly make fun of "both-sides!" guys is because they tend to ignore degree. To a vegetarian, eating hamburgers is wrong (some might even call it evil). But you'd be hard-pressed to find one who'd consider hambuger-eaters and murderers basically the same. You'd rightfully consider someone with such beliefs insane. Between murderers and hamburger eaters, one is considerably worse than the other.
- BobbyTables2 11mo agoThe only evidence of Democrats doing ballot stuffing is they also royally failed to get the majority last time around. Therefore they must have done it since they’re good at failing (/s).
- 11mo ago
- ivape 11mo agoI am utterly terrified of elections finally. I didn't expect that to be in my timeline. The masses are really crazy.
- BobbyTables2 11mo agoEven if just 30% is crazy it seriously messes up elections, especially with low overall turnout. Not sure if mandatory voting is the answer either. The old way of “only landowners” voting is arguably highly unfair but might also have held a tiny grain of wisdom. We don’t allow just anyone to drive a car, practice medicine, or give legal advice. But can’t imagine how a “voting license” could be implemented either.
- consumer451 11mo agoThe key is to keep turnout low. That is shockingly easy with just a phrase or two.
- Nasrudith 11mo agoThe conclusion that an account being cheap is the problem as a reason for regulation is a disturbingly wrong-headed on multiple levels. It essentially says. "If only superpowers can use it would be a-okay!". A monopoly on manipulation is a bad thing for the same reasons allowing only incumbents to run political ads would be.
- Barrin92 11mo agorunning political ads is in and of itself value neutral, tools for manipulation aren't. Just having them in the hands of fewer people is a straight up win in the same way having bioweapons in the hand of fewer people is. "I wish everyone had Sarin gas to level the playing field" isn't really a great idea. I think a minimum pricing on accounts, even if it's just a buck or two on most social media sites would do very little to hinder genuine participation but probably eliminate or render transparent most political manipulation. Arguably the primary reason nobody does it is because it would reveal how fake their stats are and how little value there actually is in it
- sejje 11mo agoDo we have solid evidence that these accounts actually change votes?
- fsflover 11mo agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46223522 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46223522
- toofy 11mo agoi upvoted you, but it would be very helpful to add a description to what you’re linking rather than just dropping it with no description whatsoever.
- fsflover 11mo agoThanks. At least in this particular case, the question was pretty clear, so I skipped the description. Also, I wish HN would automatically expand links when the whole post has nothing else.
- kranke155 11mo agoOf course they do. And yes there is proof for AI chatbots now, see the link in the other post, but in the last 10 years (since the Cambridge Analytica purchase by Bob Mercer) the usage was sock puppet networks and basic auto reply bots. However, they were microtargeted to individual psychology. So yes they work. We now have multiple networks discovered in multiple countries, ie Analytica, Team Jorge in Israel, Internet Research Agency in Russia. And that's the ones we know about. Why would multiple countries double down on an idea that doesn't work? Every right wing movement in Europe that had any contact with Bannon through his "The Movement" "data analytics" training program has all the outer appearances of running a large bot program, now using LLMs. In Portugal for the origins of the bot network they traced them in Angola. In Brasil the origin was Israel.
- wdr1 11mo agoNo. And having worked in digital advertising for 20+ years, I'd be shocked if they are anywhere as effective as often claimed. It's mostly clickbait/outrage for the sake of headlines & clicks.
- dehrmann 11mo agoWhen Citizens United was a big deal, I was torn over the premise of the concern for election integrity. Ideally, voters would make rational, informed decisions. They'd see ads, but know they all have an agenda, so they'd do their own research and come to a conclusion. Worrying about biased or inaccurate noise influencing elections means you think people can't be trusted to vote. Which might be true, and if it is, it's a bigger problem than corporate speech and fake accounts.
- jawon 11mo agoThis is “why are we going to space when we haven’t cured cancer” reasoning.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- mikem170 11mo agoOther western democracies go further than the U.S. with campaign restrictions, including restrictions to campaign financing. One might say they protect the functioning of their democracies more with these additional restrictions, protecting voters. And one might ask why we don't want to protect ours more.
- dehrmann 11mo agoI'll swing wildly in the other direction with campaign financing and point out Bloomberg's run for president. He outspent everybody and won American Samoa. He wasn't unqualified, either. He was mayor of NYC.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- mikem170 11mo agoAre you saying that one billionaire's loss in the primaries indicates money is not a problem in U.S. politics? I was thinking of things like the 2015 study referenced in this article [0] that looked at 1,800 policy change polls over three decades indicating that elites got their way twice as often as the majority, and the majority never - not a single time - got something the elites didn't support. In the other direction, the article gave examples of things the elites wanted that were passed into law, even thought he majority opposed. Like NAFTA, the Bush tax cuts, and the repeal of Glass-Steagall banking laws. It appears that politicians pay more attention to voters with money. btw, I agree with you that ideally voters are rational and informed. I guess that's a separate question than the influence of money. [0] https://www.minnpost.com/eric-black-ink/2015/05/disturbing-data-rich-and-powerful-get-their-policies-adopted-even-if-opposed/ https://www.minnpost.com/eric-black-ink/2015/05/disturbing-d...
- romaaeterna 11mo agoThe people most susceptible to consensus mirage are, by the very nature of the beast, the ones least aware of it happening to themselves. Any opinion that you find yourself praised for by any of the groups in your social circle is infinitely suspect.
- paulryanrogers 11mo ago> Any opinion that you find yourself praised for by any of the groups in your social circle is infinitely suspect. It is insidious how easily we divide ourselves into rival tribes. For too many it's not enough to feel belonging within a group, they/we crave others to look down upon or fight. IMO we are our best when we can debate ideas dispassionately, without defining ourselves by them.
- charcircuit 11mo agoJust the price of the account doesn't mean much alone. The other important factor is how easily the account can get (shadow)banned from the region you are trying to influence. And for the price given we just know it's account. We don't know how sketchy it appears to the provider. Not all accounts are created equal. For example a verified US account will be cheaper than a verified Japan account because Japan has stricter regulations around phone numbers. And then if you don't have a Japan account you might not be able to reach a potential Japanese audience due to not only antitrust of the platform, but also features that use geolocation for relevance.
- energy123 11mo agoCheap accounts from other regions are equally useful for mass upvoting preferred viewpoints.
- charcircuit 11mo agoTake a look at the YouTube algorithm. If those other accounts aren't in the same cohorts as your target audience you aren't going to accomplish much. The idea that accounts are fungible like they were 2 decades ago isn't true.
- dmix 11mo agoThat ignores a huge part of how spam detection works. It’s way more complex than buying some accounts. You’d need thousands of IP addresses / proxies that aren’t flagged and a non suspicious phone number, plus various other signals like browser automation detection and other advanced bot detection. There’s a reason those Asian spam offices are like slave camps. They use real people because they need to. It’s a whole sophisticated operation.
- RickJWagner 11mo agoInteresting. How to counteract these online imposters?
- reeeli 11mo ago[flagged]
- msy 11mo agoCountries understood in the age of TV/newspapers that control of the media was a sovereignty issue. Any nation that wishes to remain truly sovereign, particularly in the English-speaking world is going to have to grasp the nettle and block or force divesture of Meta & the other US social media giants. Cambridge Analytica was the canary, the gloves are off now. Australia's under-16 social media ban is a good first step but we need to go much further and fast, as much as government control is undesirable at least a democratic government is somewhat accountable, the nexus of US tech giants and it's sprawling intelligence services is not.
- whatshisface 11mo agoThere's zero overlap between banning social media for kids and banning news from Rupert. P.S. that soveregnity issue is not likely to be acted on because there are always a lot of people who prefer foreign influence to domestic opposition! Just ask the Roman Empire.
- jaybrendansmith 11mo agoCompletely agree with this. There's a reason the FCC exists and it has nothing to do with electromagnetic frequencies. This agency, just like the Fed, needs to be broken away from politics completely. It's almost too late.
- hulitu 11mo ago> Countries understood in the age of TV/newspapers that control of the media was a sovereignty issue. Do you have any examples ?
- void-star 11mo agoIt’s notable and interesting this research is coming out of University of Cambridge. Cambridge Analytica spun out of academia there too? Question for folks here who may be familiar: it seems like there’s a strong connection to research (and in the case of CA, commercial application of said research) around social media manipulation and propaganda in the digital age. Is there any six-degrees type connection to the people doing this research and those involved with the roots of CA? Not as in the same bad actors (which, tbh yes, I consider CA to have been), but as in perhaps the same department and/or professors etc.
- pentacent_hq 11mo agoCA was not spun out of Cambridge University. There's even a statement from the university about this: https://www.cam.ac.uk/notices/news/statement-from-the-university-of-cambridge-about-dr-aleksandr-kogan https://www.cam.ac.uk/notices/news/statement-from-the-univer... > Cambridge Analytica has no connection or association with the University of Cambridge whatsoever.
- void-star 11mo agoThanks for the clarification. I wasn’t sure if I was right about that hence the question mark.
- esperent 11mo agoI've had a thought in my mind recently. There's been a sudden push in Western countries towards "think-of-the-children" online age gating, and hence online verification tools, and any age verification tool that works can verify other things, like whether the user is a real person or not. The "that works" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there, but we should assume that the politicians pushing for this at least believe it's possible. Of course, any push for new legislation like this has many factions, and I'm sure there's a large faction who genuinely want better CSAM scanning tools, and another large faction who want to spy on and control what people can say online. But those factions have always existed. Why is this push coming so strongly now in so many countries, and getting so much traction, when it previously failed? Perhaps it's because politicians have recognized this existential threat. If they can't control what fake AI accounts say online to their real citizens, and the cost of running those fake accounts is trending down to the point where they'll vastly outnumber real people, then western civilization is lost. Democracy only works when there's a reasonable amount of signal in the noise. When it's basically all noise, and the noise is specifically created to destroy the system, the system is dead. So perhaps there's another faction for whom this think-of-the-children stuff is a way to get verification normalized, and that's a way to get real humans verified online. This would not be accepted if it was done directly (or at least, politicians believe that people wouldn't accept it, and I tend to agree). I personally react strongly again almost any kind of online control. But for the first time in my life, where we're no longer faced with troll centers that required real humans to work, but we're instead facing millions or billions of AI agents that are rapidly becoming indistinguishable from real humans, and are specifically designed to fight a hidden war against western civilization, I don't really see any other good option either. Small forums with strong moderation like HN are great, but they don't scale. At best they'll be small enclaves of resistance, but most people will be using larger services that are overrun by fake accounts. And realistically, if we fast forward ten years where I can spin up a few thousand (or million) fake accounts for $1000, that are indistinguishable from real humans and tell them to target any small forum of my choice, I don't think any moderation team can survive that.
- pixl97 11mo agoThe future of the internet is a dark forest
- Razengan 11mo agoHow were elections swayed before the internet? How much do fake supporters, protestors etc cost? What can be done about them?
- nephihaha 11mo agoBy establishing two party systems and normalising them.
- tamimio 11mo agoAnd yet a lot of services claim they are keeping the phone number as a requirement for registration to “prevent fraud and abuse”, pro tip, it is not, the real reason is to link your real identity to your digital one, and even that number can be tracked with cellular towers. So never trust any service who sells itself for privacy and all and still requires a phone number, and that includes Signal.
- jiggawatts 11mo agoAnd Anthropic, which is why I don’t use Claude.
- betaby 11mo agoIf that is as easy as the comments suggest, EU should just pay couple euros to sway elections in Hungary, Russia, Belarus, etc.
- dmix 11mo agoThey’d probably have to outsource it. It’d be very expensive hiring thousands of people to do it in Europe full time and they have to be native Russian/hungarian speakers to not get immediately caught. They’d have to be connected to the pulse of the local culture. Popular posts on Twitter, Facebook etc have tens of thousands of likes and comments. It’d be a major operation to do it and might not push the needle. The scale of the Russian one caught in the US in 2016 was pretty small. They were spent about $400k on FB/twitter while the campaigns spent about $2 billion and PACs spent $4 billion (about 15,000x more).
- enaaem 11mo agoThere is a reason why Russia bans Facebook..
- burnt-resistor 11mo agoIn the US, it's relatively inexpensive to buy up radio and TV stations and newspapers in low population states, then flood the zone with must-run pieces aimed at manufacturing consent for a particular worldview. That delivers a voting majority of a minimum of 1 representative and exactly 2 senate primed to favor a particular set of values and political objectives. Doesn't even require cheating by racial gerrymandering. (Political gerrymandering was legalized by SCOTUS in the 2019 Rucho case.)
- malshe 11mo agoThere was tons of research happening in the space of online misinformation after Cambridge Analytica scandal. But NSF cancelled all the existing grants for misinformation research based on Trump's January 2025 EO. They will not fund anything related to this going forward: https://www.nsf.gov/updates-on-priorities#misinformation https://www.nsf.gov/updates-on-priorities#misinformation
- rasz 11mo agoFund? Forget the funding, they will not let people working in the field to enter US deny visas to factcheckers and content moderators https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/05/trump-administration-us-visa-crackdown https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/05/trump-admini...
- consumer451 11mo agoRelated story: > Taylor Swift’s Last Album Sparked Bizarre Accusations of Nazism. It Was a Coordinated Attack [0] I am not a fan of her music, but it was so transparent that when she indicated some political ideas that were not aligned with the one true party, all kinds of astroturffing against her suddenly appeared. This is but one example. What's really interesting about this technique is that some of her fans got on-board with the scheme very readily. [0] https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/taylor-swifts-social-media-campaign-life-of-a-showgirl-1235480646/ https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/taylor-swifts-...
- throwawaypath 11mo ago[dead]
- whynotmaybe 11mo agoNoobs, way easier to just integrate the platforms owners into your campaign that would do it for "free"
- throwawaypath 11mo agoDemocrats did that as well.
- whynotmaybe 11mo agoAnd yet they lost, so they really suck at mass media manipulation.
- throwawaypath 11mo agoIt wasn't the lack of "mass media manipulation" that caused them to lose. A few Facebook and Twitter ads did not swing an election.
- skeptrune 11mo agoThere are whitehat reasons to use these services with regards to creating private accounts for common digital software services. I'd be interested to know what % of usage is for that vs. sentiment manipulation.
- Forgeties79 11mo ago$100 for 4400 twitter verifications. That explains a lot.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- throwawaypath 11mo agoPaid DNC (US Democratic Party) staffers were caught swaying/manipulating some of the largest political and regional subreddits: https://archive.is/XfL8h https://archive.is/XfL8h
- faidit 11mo agoInteresting, but this is still done inefficiently by a relatively small group of actual humans. The damage that a Thiel/Musk owned industrial bot swarm can do is much greater imo. I've seen Discord bots (shapes.ai) that can converse responsively in gen Z slang, react emotionally when praised or insulted, display great political astuteness, and are virtually indistinguishable from real people. Someone with enough money can deploy those at massive scale and keep the operation secret.
- red-iron-pine 11mo ago62 day old account with 12 karma making claims that are patently bunk and then linking to a dubious website that seems to want to run a whole buncha scrips... low hanging fruit of shillbots
- throwawaypath 11mo ago>62 day old account with 12 karma "No wrongthink heretics allowed!" >making claims that are patently bunk The claims are patently factual that you can verify. >linking to a dubious website that seems to want to run a whole buncha scrips... "We must preserve the narrative! Any website right of Stalin must be shut down!" >low hanging fruit of shillbots FUD comment placed, $0.05 have been deposited to your account. Great job, comrade!