Million Dollar Crowdturfing Industry Dupes Social Networks

New submitter bowlinearl writes "Three weeks ago Slashdot featured a story on the Chinese Water Army. A new study from researchers at UCSB delves even deeper into the problem of crowdturfing (full disclosure: I am one of the authors of the study). The study reveals that evil crowdsourcing services in China are a multi-million dollar industry, and that the number of jobs and the amount of money are growing exponentially. Hundreds of thousands of workers are involved, including a small contingent of career crowdturfers who each manage hundreds of accounts on social networks. The researchers observed the behavior of workers and the unwitting users who click on the generated spam by infiltrating the two largest crowdsourcing sites in China. However, crowdturfing isn't confined to China: the researchers discovered crowdsourcing sites in the U.S. that are 95% astroturf, as opposed to Amazon's Mechanical Turk, which actively polices itself, and is only 12% astroturf."

Comments

Evil crowdturfing services?

[niftydude]

Evil seems a strong word - as with everything - when obtaining information, know who you are talking to, and always consider the source.

It's the first lesson everyone should learn.

Re:Evil crowdturfing services?

[InsightIn140Bytes]

Likewise, people sometimes have an axe to grind or just doesn't like some company - like here on Slashdot that would be Microsoft - and say anything bad about them even if it isn't true. So some good crowdturfing just adjust that side of things and they both stay in balance.

Re:Evil crowdturfing services?

[drinkypoo]

All evil acts boil down either to fraud, or some kind of denial of service or possession.

How can you doubt that fraud is an evil act? We are in between good and evil, but acts are one or the other. You do the math and you figure out which they are. Sometimes all the options are evil, of course.

Re:Evil crowdturfing services?

[rtfa-troll]

Most of them. Oh I'm sure that with big corporations the proportion of honesty falls. I doubt more than 50% use such things as a matter of policy. Small and family owned businesses live on their reputation and know that if they get caught doing that kind of thing it will be in tatters. I think the "everybody's doing it" meme is partly self justification but is mostly a lie spread by the few that do it as a kind of self justification. This is why strong regulators (effectively enforcing existing regulations; making sure that they are relevant; not just adding new ones) are better for almost everybody.

Re:Evil crowdturfing services?

[Moryath]

The difference is whether you have a workable, sustainable, working system or a broken, exploitable system.

Yahoo Answers's system is pretty clearly exploitable. Want to get someone banned? 6 dummy accounts will do the trick - their "ban process" automatically bans someone after 6 complaints. Amazon has some funny reviews, some funnier ones, but more importantly, they actually have humans check on complaints if there's an indication that stuff indicated here is going on.

The uglier truth is that for many sites - slashdot included - the real exploit is held by people who can do precisely what TFA's authors describe: running hundreds of accounts, commanding click-up or click-down votes through them or (in the case of Slashdot) farming for mod points. Evolving Slashdot policy has actually made this worse, not better, for three reasons I'll crib from an earlier thread:

#1 - The best posters never moderate. They're involved in discussions, and you can never moderate AND post in the same thread.
#2 - It's too easy for the modpoint-harvesters to attack someone's karma; you can go into people's posting history as far as you want, and downmod weeks-old posts for no reason other than to bury karma.
#3 - The hidden gem: Slashdot implemented something akin to Yahoo's completely retarded "auto ban" function. To wit: "Also, if a single user is moderated down several times in a short time frame, a temporary ban will be imposed on that user... a cooling off period if you will. It lasts for 72 hours, or more for users who have posted a ton." The end result here is that the modpoint harvesters have been given a weapon - they control a "ban button" with which to attack not only the karma of their targets, but the posting rights of their targets.

The worst part? You can't ever see who downmodded. Sometimes you can see the reasons, but the modpoint harvesters get wise to the tricks - currently, you'll see the majority of modpoint harvesters downmodding as "Offtopic" and "Overrated" because those didn't go through the metamod system. Although, come to think of it, I don't think I've seen a metamod nag in 3 months... do they even have that system any more?

Re:Evil crowdturfing services?

[owlnation]

misleading/unethical. not really evil.

Actually... it's Fraud. Definitely evil, definitely illegal.

By legal definition: "an intentional deception made for personal gain or to damage another individual"

It never ceases to amaze me how desensitized and amoral so many geeks (and anyone under 30) are these days. It's definitely evil.

Re:Evil crowdturfing services?

[NeutronCowboy]

I'm totally surprised that the guy who officially admits being employed by a Microsoft PR firm thinks that astroturfing is an awesome idea.

Here's the difference between you and some rabid fanboys: rabid fanboys can in theory be argued with. They at least fit into the format of putting forth an argument that can stand on its own merits, and they in theory could change their mind when presented with counterarguments. In essence, there's the chance of an actual debate taking place. In practice, it's a different story, because fanboys tie their self-worth to how awesome a company is, and will go through all kinds of mental gymnastics to defend their support for a company.

However, a PR droid like you is incapable of engaging in an honest debate. You are paid to advocate a position, regardless of its truth, value to me or to society. The best you can do is hang some valid arguments onto your advertisement. Which is fine and dandy, if there's a way for me to avoid said advertisement. I use adblock because I find most ads to be content and value-less. Your ads that are masquerading as comments are similarly useless to me, because by definition, they are not based on a rational underpinning.

Likewise, people sometimes have an axe to grind or just doesn't like some company - like here on Slashdot that would be Microsoft - and say anything bad about them even if it isn't true. So some good crowdturfing just adjust that side of things and they both stay in balance.

I love your justification for your job. So because there are some trolls that already bring down the quality of the discussion, the right approach is to bring countertrolls in that further degrade the discussion?

For anyone who is wondering what is wrong with letting paid PR droids post without an "ad" tag, this is it: by their own admission, the best they can do is to add countertrolls to a discussion.They will degrade the signal-to-noise ratio of a site.

sorry...

[alienzed]

what?

Stop Making up New Words

[Anonymous Coward]

What on earth is a "crowdturfer"?
Did you mistype crowdsurfer? Is it a group of people who install sod?

If you're going to go batshit crazy with the new buzzwords, at least define them as you make them up. (Yes, that's right, TFA is the first and only use of this stupid word according to the google.)

I haven't been this dumbfounded since some genius came up with "nettop".

Re:Still not a problem....

[migla]

The problem comes with the numbers. You say the average person is not so dumb, well, half of the people are dumber than that.

It's like with advertising. It works. If it didn't, the big shoesalespeople wouldn't be putting more than half of their turnover into marketing. You and me may not be dumb enough to fall for it, but on the whole, it works and thus the thought that the system consists of rational individuals making the best decisions for themselves is mathematically laughable. Bah! That's a nice tangent I went off on there... Point being: -turfing probably still works, otherwise they wouldn't invest so heavily in it. Problem? I think so. Solution? Off the top of my head I can't come up with others than education and hard work of those who can spread truth. Or the crushing of capitalism, of course.

Re:Still not a problem....

[mwvdlee]

To most sane people, it isn't worth spending hours reading reviews for a $20 product.

sigh

[Black Parrot]

Our species has gotten its hands on toys that we're just not grown-up enough to play with.

Re:Still not a problem....

[delinear]

It depends what that product is, what you're planning to use it for and how easy it is to replace - I probably spent longer than I usually would reading reviews for camera equipment I planned to take abroad because it would have been a pain to try and replace it in a foreign country. Things that you need to take on a trip, or that you might need to rely on at short notice and/or during an emergency it certainly can pay to read the reviews.

Re:Mandatory Notice

[Dripdry]

So you're willing to express that they're "not shills", but not willing to say who you are? That's.... brilliant. Just brilliant. Way to convince us that you're not just trying to cover up because you happen to be on that list.