5 ms·

I'm sure Twitter knows which are the bot accounts and is surely excluding them from their model training. Twitter bots aren't a new phenomenon after all.

pixel_popping 6mo ago
There is bots everywhere, it has nothing to do with the platform, it has to do with attackers having an incentive to do mass account farming, no platform is secure against it.
- simianwords 6mo ago
  not really. there are easy heuristics to filter out bots with good confidence. FWIW i don't see any bots posting anything in my feed
  - pixel_popping 6mo ago
    Yes your individual feed isn't really relevant if we talk about the masses, Reddit accounts are for sale quite cheap, HN as well, X too and so-on, it's literally just a matter of means/methodology. If I want today to do 1000 random posts talking about a certain thing, I could.
    - simianwords 6mo ago
      my individual feed does matter because it shows that it is possible to curate something without bots which is obviously what XAI would do
  - ninininino 6mo ago
    congratulations, you have solved anti-scam. go make your billion since its easy.
    - simianwords 6mo ago
      its easy to solve at the offline level where you have time to filter out. in fact this is already done in pre-training by OpenAI and other companies. you think its hard?
      - ninininino 6mo ago
        Yes I think it's hard. OpenAI has already been proven to be easily gamed through very unsophisticated poisoning (fake information in a web page + an edit to a wiki page pointing at it, fake information in a reddit post), so I'm not sure we shoudl hold up their efforts at data cleaning as a gold standard. https://www.sei.cmu.edu/blog/data-poisoning-in-ai-models-the-case-for-chain-of-custody-controls/ https://www.sei.cmu.edu/blog/data-poisoning-in-ai-models-the...
- kedihacker 6mo ago
  With banning and deboosting they need to be very accurate but with filtering they can be more liberal in excluding
- rglullis 6mo ago
  Super easy, just make a web-of-trust type of thing: messages are only visible to those who already vouched for you. Otherwise, you pay $0.01/per message/per user reached.
  - pixel_popping 6mo ago
    How would that solve it? If I pay, I can still push the content I want (factual or not) which is the same equivalent as paying for accounts directly.
    - rglullis 6mo ago
      By buying accounts, you are buying reputation. By paying for the posts, you are maybe paying for reach at first, but (a) it will be costly and (b) it does not guarantee that the reached ones will spread anything further.
cowsup 6mo ago
I don't think Twitter/X know for sure who the bots are, since Elon has been pretty vocal about trying to stop them for ages, yet I still get lots of spam DMs (as do others with far fewer followers/reach). Even if 95% of the spam gets actively reported and dealt with, that still leaves a ton of nonsense on the platform, getting fed into the LLM. And spam has only gotten worse over the years, as the barrier to entry has lowered and lowered.
- joncrane 6mo ago
  >Elon has been pretty vocal about trying to stop them for ages You know people lie, right? Especially when the lie casts them in a better light and/or makes them more money.
- subscribed 6mo ago
  Elon lied on record many times, admitting to the lies only when forced, under oath.
- HarHarVeryFunny 6mo ago
  I'd have guessed that at least some of the bots are Twitter itself, trying to draw you in with some sense of engagement. Given that Musk is the owner, and everything we know about him and have seen him do, I'd not be surprised if some of the MAGA bots are his too.
- GTP 6mo ago
  Are the spam DMs advertisements or more generally something linked to a product or service? I wouldn't be surprised if X is more lenient towards bots that pay them for adverts.
  - Zancarius 6mo ago
    Most of what I get seem to be advertisements or automated messages if you follow large(r) accounts. One of the most interesting things that I've noticed is these advertisements will be triggered if you follow accounts that are positioned as influencers. I followed one out of curiosity and received a DM from that account advertising some cryptocurrency service. It's a good way to filter out and block accounts that have almost certainly not grown organically.
hackinthebochs 6mo ago
Highly doubtful seeing as my 14 year old twitter account got caught in a recent bot ban wave with no means of contacting a human for recovery.

pixel_popping 6mo ago

There is bots everywhere, it has nothing to do with the platform, it has to do with attackers having an incentive to do mass account farming, no platform is secure against it.

simianwords 6mo ago
not really. there are easy heuristics to filter out bots with good confidence. FWIW i don't see any bots posting anything in my feed
- pixel_popping 6mo ago
  Yes your individual feed isn't really relevant if we talk about the masses, Reddit accounts are for sale quite cheap, HN as well, X too and so-on, it's literally just a matter of means/methodology. If I want today to do 1000 random posts talking about a certain thing, I could.
  - simianwords 6mo ago
    my individual feed does matter because it shows that it is possible to curate something without bots which is obviously what XAI would do
- ninininino 6mo ago
  congratulations, you have solved anti-scam. go make your billion since its easy.
  - simianwords 6mo ago
    its easy to solve at the offline level where you have time to filter out. in fact this is already done in pre-training by OpenAI and other companies. you think its hard?
    - ninininino 6mo ago
      Yes I think it's hard. OpenAI has already been proven to be easily gamed through very unsophisticated poisoning (fake information in a web page + an edit to a wiki page pointing at it, fake information in a reddit post), so I'm not sure we shoudl hold up their efforts at data cleaning as a gold standard. https://www.sei.cmu.edu/blog/data-poisoning-in-ai-models-the-case-for-chain-of-custody-controls/ https://www.sei.cmu.edu/blog/data-poisoning-in-ai-models-the...
kedihacker 6mo ago
With banning and deboosting they need to be very accurate but with filtering they can be more liberal in excluding
rglullis 6mo ago
Super easy, just make a web-of-trust type of thing: messages are only visible to those who already vouched for you. Otherwise, you pay $0.01/per message/per user reached.
- pixel_popping 6mo ago
  How would that solve it? If I pay, I can still push the content I want (factual or not) which is the same equivalent as paying for accounts directly.
  - rglullis 6mo ago
    By buying accounts, you are buying reputation. By paying for the posts, you are maybe paying for reach at first, but (a) it will be costly and (b) it does not guarantee that the reached ones will spread anything further.

cowsup 6mo ago

I don't think Twitter/X know for sure who the bots are, since Elon has been pretty vocal about trying to stop them for ages, yet I still get lots of spam DMs (as do others with far fewer followers/reach). Even if 95% of the spam gets actively reported and dealt with, that still leaves a ton of nonsense on the platform, getting fed into the LLM. And spam has only gotten worse over the years, as the barrier to entry has lowered and lowered.

joncrane 6mo ago
>Elon has been pretty vocal about trying to stop them for ages You know people lie, right? Especially when the lie casts them in a better light and/or makes them more money.
subscribed 6mo ago
Elon lied on record many times, admitting to the lies only when forced, under oath.
HarHarVeryFunny 6mo ago
I'd have guessed that at least some of the bots are Twitter itself, trying to draw you in with some sense of engagement. Given that Musk is the owner, and everything we know about him and have seen him do, I'd not be surprised if some of the MAGA bots are his too.
GTP 6mo ago
Are the spam DMs advertisements or more generally something linked to a product or service? I wouldn't be surprised if X is more lenient towards bots that pay them for adverts.
- Zancarius 6mo ago
  Most of what I get seem to be advertisements or automated messages if you follow large(r) accounts. One of the most interesting things that I've noticed is these advertisements will be triggered if you follow accounts that are positioned as influencers. I followed one out of curiosity and received a DM from that account advertising some cryptocurrency service. It's a good way to filter out and block accounts that have almost certainly not grown organically.

hackinthebochs 6mo ago

Highly doubtful seeing as my 14 year old twitter account got caught in a recent bot ban wave with no means of contacting a human for recovery.