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Battling Fake Accounts, Twitter To Slash Millions of Followers (nytimes.com) 87

Posted by msmash from the taking-a-strong-step dept.
Twitter will begin removing tens of millions of suspicious accounts from users' followers on Thursday, signaling a major new effort to restore trust on the popular but embattled platform. From a report: The reform takes aim at a pervasive form of social media fraud. Many users have inflated their followers on Twitter or other services with automated or fake accounts, buying the appearance of social influence to bolster their political activism, business endeavors or entertainment careers. Twitter's decision will have an immediate impact: Beginning on Thursday, many users, including those who have bought fake followers and any others who are followed by suspicious accounts, will see their follower numbers fall. While Twitter declined to provide an exact number of affected users, the company said it would strip tens of millions of questionable accounts from users' followers.
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Battling Fake Accounts, Twitter To Slash Millions of Followers More

Battling Fake Accounts, Twitter To Slash Millions of Followers

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  • Heh. Hasta la vista, "Influencers" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TigerPlish ( 174064 ) on Wednesday July 11, 2018 @04:30PM (#56931400)

    I hope there's a ton of "influencers" in this purge. They're the most fakety-fake-fake of all "media personalities."

    • I hope there's a ton of "influencers" in this purge. They're the most fakety-fake-fake of all "media personalities."

      Uh, there's a difference between a fake account and a fake personality.

      A Kardashian is a fake personality.

      A fake account is what a Kardashian buys to perpetuate their fake personality.

      At the end of the day it won't matter. This bullshit move isn't going to restore trust any more than a little blue checkmark did.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by ruddk ( 5153113 )

        Should be interesting to see if we will see a drop in followers for some of these celebrities.
        I suppose it would be fraud. Claiming that you have X number of followers to people who pay to have you promote their stuff.

    • But if they weren't effective, companies (legitimate or not) wouldn't seek to court them. Influencers are nothing new, we just used to call them movie stars or rock stars without really thinking about them in terms of influence. The only thing that's really different with this new set on Twitter is that they don't necessarily have an celebrity (or they're famous merely for being famous) or skills that might even mislead people into trusting them in areas outside of that skill set.

      At least with Twitter yo
    • If I know modern day mainstream journalists I'm pretty sure they're going to be the people who cry foul the loudest if this is actually effective at curbing bought followers.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I saw an article recently about how the "influencers" have been demanding things like free stays at resorts in exchange for a post. Not being a user of these social media platforms I was amazed at the brazenness of even sending an email to a hotel in the Maldives or Scotland and even asking for such a thing.

      The entitlement mentality is absolutely dumbfounding.

  • I've only got 42 as it is. I'm pretty sure 10-15 of them are real people, but if the rest are bots ... frankly, I don't wanna know.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      42 is the perfect number of followers. I hope you don't gain or lose any.

      I've lost about half of mine so far this year. I post mainly HR-related stuff for work, and it's I find it strange so many thousands of people are interested in what I post. We did a user conference in April, and several people told me in person that they had their Twitter accounts deleted and could no longer follow me. That pisses me off considering the amount of work I do to find interesting things to post, and it hurts my employ

  • And deleting tons of legitimate accounts (Score:3)

    by greenwow ( 3635575 ) on Wednesday July 11, 2018 @04:36PM (#56931440)

    Our online marketing manager had her account deleted a few weeks ago, and her assistant's account was deleted sometime this year since January when she last used it. I just checked my account, and other people can't see my Tweets. Twitter is really shooting themselves in the foot with this.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mvdwege ( 243851 )

      'Legitimate'. 'online marketing manager'.

      You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.

  • Does this mean Kim Kardashian will no longer be the most popular woman in the world?
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • As you keep mentioning her, not likely.

        Thanks for adding to the conversation.

        Point is a lot of the purge is likely from followers created by folks like these https://devumi.com/twitter-fol... [devumi.com]

        Interesting that the company isn't accepting clients any more around the time Twitter is culling the herd.

    • Actually I did at first have to google that name. Then I noticed she's some sort of voyeur-TV celebrity of some sort.

      Ya know, when I was young, being a celebrity meant that you could do something really well and that people admired you for it. Today it seems to mean more that you're too stupid for any kind of meaningful work, too lazy to do any non-meaningful work and too proud to go for social security.

  • They may turn twatter in to something I can use. I've seen it as a garbage site from the beginning and due to this I have never created an account.

    • It's somewhat useful for customer complaints. I have a weather related list I use to track incoming hurricanes, blizzards and other natural disasters. And I have a list for NYC government accounts to track city related stuff if need be

  • What's it for? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Explain what twitter is for then GTFO my lawn.

  • I suspect most of my 1K+ followers are bots. Very few are real people. I just use my ten-year-old Twitter account to pimp my YouTube videos to comic con crowds over the weekends. I had 25.3K impressions and an average engagement rate of ~3% (that's great by traditional advertising standards) in the last 28 days.
  • because i NEVER post any tweets, i luck 100% of the time in order to follow @versiontracker (Freshcode.club) it is basically what Freshmeat.org used to be that listed freshly release FOSS software,

    i follow them and a few others, and thats all i do, i log on, read the new posts and leave, no tweets coming from me

  • See subject.

  • In order to restore something, it must first have exited, then been lost.

    Nobody with any sense would have trusted Twitter in the first place, and those that do are gullible enough that they never lost it.

    So what's to restore?

  • Pointless? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by duke_cheetah2003 ( 862933 ) on Wednesday July 11, 2018 @05:21PM (#56931664) Homepage

    Can they actually eliminate fake accounts faster than they are being created?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      They just have to make fake account creation expensive enough that the problem is significantly reduced. For example, if they can spot when people are using profile photos harvested from other social media accounts then they will have to start investing a lot more time and effort in generating profile photos.

      The other classic giveaway is claiming to be from Dudley when you only ever post from an IP address in St. Petersberg during Russian office hours.

  • They are not 'followers'. They are at best deluded users, and at worst actually nonexistent fake accounts.

    All that will be lost is;

    Twitter stock value

    Twitter prestige

    Users' padded, invalid stats

    Users' prestige

    Our last shreds of stubborn innocence

  • NextDoor next... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by jtara ( 133429 )

    When they figure out how to weed out fake account, could they share their knowledge with NextDoor.com?

    Even the most obvious fakes are approved, and seldom deleted. In fact, complaining about the fakes will get you suspended.

    In my neighborhood, we have/had:

    - Jack Mehoff
    - Pat McGroin
    - Flappy Flapstick
    - Elenor Capstick (seems innocuous, until "she" posts back-to-back comments with Flappy Flapstick)
    - A fake reporter and fake executive producer of news from a local TV station. I reported it to the TV station. It

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by crtreece ( 59298 )
      Nextdoor has a website as well, it's not just an app. Jack Mehoff could just have multiple private browsing windows open at the same time. If you want a chuckle, check out the "best" of nextdoor twitter feed @bestofnextdoor [twitter.com]

  • Were I generating such fake accounts, they wouldn't only follow people who paid me. I'd give each account several interests - e.g. 'jazz', 'online gaming', 'San Francisco'. Then I'd have them follow several legitimate people for each interest, randomly chosen. Finally when I get a jazz customer wanting followers, this account is one of the ones that might randomly be chosen to follow the customer.

    The point being that if this is how it is done, completely innocent people will see their follower numbers drop

  • while deleting fake accounts may be a good idea, hope they wont end up delete accounts of users who aren't frequently active on twitter? http://www.naijadailyfeed.com/ [naijadailyfeed.com]
  • will be studio approve and positive on social media.
    No comments about actors and their ability to act. No negative comments about the movie plot, script.
    SJW on social media are ready to report and remove such accounts.

    No blasphemy.
    No memes about US politics.
    No jokes about Spanish politics.
    No funny images of French politicians.
    No comments on how EU policy has failed in your country.

    Social media is going to read like one big approve banner ad for any product, service, government, faith, publishe

    • Then finally we'll have the squeaky clean, wholesome news on the internet that we have had on traditional media for the longest time, which were so bland that people actually preferred being lied to by fake news than having to endure them anymore.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by ebvwfbw ( 864834 )

        Here, read this - https://www.dailywire.com/news... [dailywire.com]

        Not for TOS or any of those other excuses you have.

        Were the Jews kicking out Nazis from restaurants, houses, banning their speech, etc or were the Nazi's doing that to the Jews? Are you sure you know which side you're on? You might be a fascist and don't even know it.

        Are Conservatives going around harassing people trying to eat? Are Conservatives going around vandalizing property? Are Conservatives going around saying crazy stuff like let illegal aliens jus

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