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We've done some analysis as well, it will be interesting to compare notes - let's connect. Best bots have real-sounding names, a photo, a bio - and they randoml

We've done some analysis as well, it will be interesting to compare notes - let's connect. Best bots have real-sounding names, a photo, a bio - and they randomly inject human comments. Found huge networks built almost entirely on IFTTT, they don't Retweet master accounts (that would only facilitate detection), they fetch the text and re-post it as their own original message. One area we looked into recently, was Russia's propaganda machine (after discovering strange patterns following the recent murder of Nemtsov). A typical spam account looks like the link below. Unlike the accounts in your screenshots, these accounts sometimes post thousands of messages a day. The one below has posted 190,000 times so far, in Russian: https://twitter.com/mashabardaeva https://twitter.com/mashabardaeva Now, if you copy any of her tweets (it's a "she"), and paste it into the Search field, you will see the "rebroadcasters": http://i.imgur.com/MVsga8X.png http://i.imgur.com/MVsga8X.png

edent 12y ago
There do seem to be multiple approaches to these zombie accounts. Lots of different ways to avoid Twitter's rate limits and spam detection.
- jacquesm 12y ago
  Thousands of messages per day should warrant immediate termination, what real life person would ever tweet steadily multiple times per minute?
  - photorized 12y ago
    Personally, I agree with you, Twitter is very much like an economy... currently, some much of the Supply (publishing) is being manufactured, it's exceeding Demand, so now the Demand (real human readership) has to be manufactured with more bots... Vicious cycle. All this results in a bad experience for the average user. Twitter is a fantastic platform, it just has certain qualities that are now becoming more of a problem than before. As for immediate automatic termination for thousands of messages per day - that's a gray area, because Automation (IFTTT etc). There are also people making living off Twitter, some of the top "influencers" or "internet marketers" post hundreds times a day. You look at someone like Marc Andreessen (I can't see @pmarca, he blocked me on Twitter:)), his total tweet count is approaching 50,000 - some may argue even this isn't possible for a typical person with a job. He pulls it off though. Going back to the topic of bots: thousands of messages per day is extreme, and that's not what most smart bots do. The biggest effect is resulting from ones that have learned to live and act well within Twitter guidelines, which doesn't just make them harder to detect, it makes them harder to ban. Here's a random account, it posts a million times a year, or 2,700 times per day: https://twitter.com/toohsuite https://twitter.com/toohsuite
- funkyy 12y ago
  Twitter, Facebook... Why do you think they would like the dummy accounts removed? As long as they are not overdoing it, they bump the statistics. I know personally people that run hundreds of thousands accounts on Facebook for marketing etc, yet they say FB does very little difficulties to them as long as they stick to some limits in posting, sharing and liking. Unfortunately reaching 1 Billion users while closing one eye on bots is very tempting.
  - photorized 12y ago
    because if it's blatant, they may be liable.
    - funkyy 12y ago
      As long as they will show "we have deleted 100K bot accounts a day since a year" they wont. No one will blame them for not inventing "foolproof" or workable spam filter, even if it is for small team of security engineers. All they need is some number of abusive accounts to ban, so statistics are right.
  - drivingmenuts 12y ago
    Astroturfers need to have their internet privileges permanently revoked.
photorized 12y ago
if anyone from Twitter is reading this, connect with me regarding the problems we uncovered, I have practical suggestions on how to make your service better.

edent 12y ago

There do seem to be multiple approaches to these zombie accounts. Lots of different ways to avoid Twitter's rate limits and spam detection.

jacquesm 12y ago
Thousands of messages per day should warrant immediate termination, what real life person would ever tweet steadily multiple times per minute?
- photorized 12y ago
  Personally, I agree with you, Twitter is very much like an economy... currently, some much of the Supply (publishing) is being manufactured, it's exceeding Demand, so now the Demand (real human readership) has to be manufactured with more bots... Vicious cycle. All this results in a bad experience for the average user. Twitter is a fantastic platform, it just has certain qualities that are now becoming more of a problem than before. As for immediate automatic termination for thousands of messages per day - that's a gray area, because Automation (IFTTT etc). There are also people making living off Twitter, some of the top "influencers" or "internet marketers" post hundreds times a day. You look at someone like Marc Andreessen (I can't see @pmarca, he blocked me on Twitter:)), his total tweet count is approaching 50,000 - some may argue even this isn't possible for a typical person with a job. He pulls it off though. Going back to the topic of bots: thousands of messages per day is extreme, and that's not what most smart bots do. The biggest effect is resulting from ones that have learned to live and act well within Twitter guidelines, which doesn't just make them harder to detect, it makes them harder to ban. Here's a random account, it posts a million times a year, or 2,700 times per day: https://twitter.com/toohsuite https://twitter.com/toohsuite
funkyy 12y ago
Twitter, Facebook... Why do you think they would like the dummy accounts removed? As long as they are not overdoing it, they bump the statistics. I know personally people that run hundreds of thousands accounts on Facebook for marketing etc, yet they say FB does very little difficulties to them as long as they stick to some limits in posting, sharing and liking. Unfortunately reaching 1 Billion users while closing one eye on bots is very tempting.
- photorized 12y ago
  because if it's blatant, they may be liable.
  - funkyy 12y ago
    As long as they will show "we have deleted 100K bot accounts a day since a year" they wont. No one will blame them for not inventing "foolproof" or workable spam filter, even if it is for small team of security engineers. All they need is some number of abusive accounts to ban, so statistics are right.
- drivingmenuts 12y ago
  Astroturfers need to have their internet privileges permanently revoked.

photorized 12y ago

if anyone from Twitter is reading this, connect with me regarding the problems we uncovered, I have practical suggestions on how to make your service better.