Internet Water Army On the March

New submitter kermidge sends in an article at the Physics arXiv blog about what's called the "Internet Water Army," large groups of people in China who are paid to "flood" internet sites with comments and reviews about various products. Researchers at the University of Victoria went undercover to figure out exactly how these informational (or disinformational) floods operate, and what they learned (PDF) could lead to better spam-detection software. Quoting: "They discovered that paid posters tend to post more new comments than replies to other comments. They also post more often with 50 per cent of them posting every 2.5 minutes on average. They also move on from a discussion more quickly than legitimate users, discarding their IDs and never using them again. What's more, the content they post is measurably different. These workers are paid by the volume and so often take shortcuts, cutting and pasting the same content many times. This would normally invalidate their posts but only if it is spotted by the quality control team. So Cheng and co built some software to look for repetitions and similarities in messages as well as the other behaviors they'd identified. They then tested it on the dataset they'd downloaded from Sina and Sohu and found it to be remarkably good, with an accuracy of 88 per cent in spotting paid posters."

Comments

Raise your hand if...

[Compaqt]

Your first thought was cyber-payback for "EU says water isn't wet."

Re:Raise your hand if...

[rossdee]

No, my first thought was internet over water pipes, since they have already tried internet over power lines, and other 'utilities (phone companies, cabletv companies) bundle internet with their services (if you get your internet, phone and cable from us you only pay $25/mo for each...

I'm part of the 50%

[mugetsu37]

I was paid to leave this new comment.

Re:I'm part of the 50%

[Fluffeh]

Great, now the internet is being Aquaturfed, not just astroturfed....

Feedback loop...

[nomel]

And, the moment this detection software is for sale, it will be inserted into the paid posters submission workflow.

Glad I'm safe!

[RobinEggs]

Well, at least we'll be safe in the English speaking world. Legitimate user reviews are always so intelligent and well-written I could easily distinguish freelancer's bullshit from the thoughts of intelligent users. Just look at the comments on Amazon and Youtube!

Slashdot Good

[Anonymous Coward]

I like Slashdot. Very good website.Soulskill best editor ever.

Re:Slashdot Good

[Hsien-Ko]

slashdot.org the best news site for apple!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

To be fair it's better than a goat sea hurricane army. But still dishonorably dirty at sugarcoating enough praise to give web sites diabetes.

This article very Super Good Thing !

[gearloos]

Slashdot Very Good Super Big Fun Site! Very Like Much Good For You Fun! Rate 5 Star Posted.

Re:Spammers are like the Climate "Skeptic" Communi

[symbolset]

It's working for global warming. I mean climate change. No, enhanced weather variability. Wait, let me start again.

Ni hao

[gmhowell]

They also move on from a discussion more quickly than legitimate users, discarding their IDs and never using them again.

I bet not a one of them has as many IDs as Michael Kristopeit.