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?

[Anonymous Coward]

Both sides would be noise, not signal, which turns comments sections into total trash. Yahoo is an obvious example where you have red/blue or racists/anti-racist white nights drowning out any intelligent posts. People trying to "balance" render the section useless and those posting factual information people already know are just as useless as they do nothing to progress anyone's thinking.

Re:Evil crowdturfing services?

[rtfa-troll]

Class man. Vote parent up. One of the first on topic Microsoft astroturfers.

And to answer your serious point; It's absolutely fine for someone to post on here on behalf of Microsoft. There certainly used to be quite a few people who would put "I work for Microsoft" in their posts when giving serious answers. The key thing is that if you are benefiting financially from posting you should declare that and just speak directly on behalf of Microsoft. Because the astroturfers don't do that they are deceptive and illegal in quite a number of jurisdictions where Microsoft markets to Slashdot readers.

The fact that Microsoft is willing to use deceptive, illegal practices quite rightly discredits other people who attempt to support Microsoft in forums. Even if someone isn't benefiting directly, it's quite likely they got their viewpoint from someone who did. This is a general poison to the public debate which makes serious discussion more difficult. There is no possible justification for it.

There is already a tendency on Slashdot that any minor technical error in a criticism of Microsoft gets picked on. If the astroturfers left this alone, this would provide more than sufficieint balance. As it is, I think that the underlying motivation is mostly to misdirect discussion making the astroturfers equivalent to forum trolls.

Re:Evil crowdturfing services?

[Torvac]

misleading/unethical. not really evil.
how is spreading lies in this way different from spreading lies in ads on TV ?

Re:Evil crowdturfing services?

[Black Parrot]

The fact that Microsoft is willing to use deceptive, illegal practices quite rightly discredits other people who attempt to support Microsoft in forums.

I wonder if there is *any* company, or politician, who isn't trying to use {xyz}turf on the WWW to convert a displeasing reality into a sweet delusion.

Re:Evil crowdturfing services?

[yotto]

Because you know that ads on TV are going to put the product in the best possible light, and use false imagery to try to trick you into wanting the product. Or, if you don't know this, you could.

Note, both are misleading. Pretending to be a satisfied customer on an Internet posting is simply MORE misleading, and therefore different, from showing a bunch of skinny women drinking beer.

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?

[drinkypoo]

how is spreading lies in this way different from spreading lies in ads on TV ?

That's evil. Legal != ethical or moral. And while we're discussing THAT bombshell, in some countries it's illegal to spread lies in ads on TV.

Re:Evil crowdturfing services?

[shentino]

Economic darwinism favors companies that can gain an advantage and not get punished for it.

Honest companies don't survive long, and the so called regulators have more to gain by colluding with the private sector than they do with doing their job.

If you want stronger regulation you have to beef up government enough to stand up against the companies you want them to regulate.

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?

[0123456]

Do mod points actually exist anymore? I used to get some just about every week until around 2007, and I've had one set of points in the years since then.

Re:Evil crowdturfing services?

[Diss Champ]

For some reason I have gotten a lot of mod points these last few weeks, after a very long dry period. The system appears to be modal- either it wants to give you a lot or none. My karma has been excellent for a long time, so it's not a (visible) karma change.

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.

Re:Evil crowdturfing services?

[somersault]

If you post a lot or a little you don't get mod points. If you're in the middle range then you get plenty. I either saw someone say that or it's in the FAQ somewhere, but it does match my experience.

sorry...

[alienzed]

what?

Still not a problem....

[RobinEggs]

I still don't understand where the problem comes in.

I know when I buy a product I don't just say "Oooh, 4.76 stars! Gimme that one!". I read every damn review I can get: I read amazon, newegg, hardocp, etc. I make a point of reading both the stellar and the abysmal reviews; of reading both user and professional reviews. I just don't see myself falling to fakes. How is some harried Chinese shill, paid by the word or by the post, going to poison my impression of the product when there are still people writing the sort of real, detailed reviews that clearly took both time and a genuine user experience to write?

It's not that I think spam reviews will all be obviously vapid or riddled with 'Engrish' straight out of some pseudo-racist 70's action film; I just don't think that even a careful, literate fake can bullshit an authentic experience in a convincing and time-efficient manner.

And I know I'm supposed to be proud of my extraordinary time investment in researching products and my technical acumen versus the typical consumer; I know I'm supposed to think of the 'average' user as some knuckle dragging moron or arthritic grandma who would easily be fooled, Still, outside the deluded minds of preening digerati the average person isn't really too bad. I think they'll spot total bullshit almost as easily as I could.

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.

Re:Still not a problem....

[webbiedave]

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

Hate that quote... grumble, grumble... MEDIAN... grumble, grumble.

Re:Still not a problem....

[Alranor]

a) Median is a form of average
b) If you're measuring intelligence over a large population, the results aren't all that far from a normal distribution, in which case the mean, median and mode will all be the same number anyway /but yeah, I know how you feel :)

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:Still not a problem....

[wanzeo]

I actually enjoy reading product reviews, it satisfies that urge to consume, while at the same time keeping the products that I buy useful and at the best possible price.

For example, I recently needed a coffee maker, I spent months reading anything I could get my hands on about coffee makers. By the time I actually bought one, many of the earlier reviews I had read were for products not even on the market anymore. But the result is that I now know a lot about coffee makers, and I am very happy about the one I bought.

Now I don't expect everyone to be such an scrupulous shopper, but I wouldn't go so far as to call people like me less than sane just because we refuse to buy the first shiny thing that floats into our vision.

Re:Still not a problem....

[mwvdlee]

The reason I say "sane" is because you could've spend all that time you spent reading reviews simply doing some extra paid work. If you spent months reading reviews, you could have probably also spend those hours working, bought half a dozen coffee makers, threw away all but the one they liked and still have had more spare time and money left.

It's not "sane" in the same way that people will spend quite some time bargaining for a few dollars on, for example. a $100 radio, yet round off the price of a new car or house to $1000. The relatively minor effort to bargain the price of a car down to $10 increments is much more profitable than all the minor bargain hunting, yet few people do.

Ofcourse, if you consider either of these (reading review, bargaining) enjoyable then there is value in doing so, albeit not a monetary value.

Re:Still not a problem....

[starfishsystems]

I'm inclined to dispute this point, using my own life as an example.

For the past forty years I've been earning a typical income, spending most of it, and saving the rest. That's typical behavior for most people, I hope. When I look at what I've spent it on, almost none of it was ever advertized. For the residue of goods and services that was subject to advertizing, I observe that my buying decisions were not made on the basis of that advertizing but on my own initiative based on need, attributes, and availability.

As a sanity check, I just took fifteen minutes to walk around the house looking at stuff. Hundreds of things. I could find no exception to the above claims.

We can certainly get into splitting hairs on what exactly is marketing. If a product is packaged in such a way that it informatively describes its attributes, that is arguably a form of marketing. Certainly I'm influenced by such information. But I don't think that's what's being discussed here. We're talking about messages whose content essentially reduces to "buy this".

I find no difficulty in identifying those messages and ignoring them. I find advertizing unpleasant, but my activities rarely put me in contact with it. Where they do, I have mitigations. For web browsing, I have ad blocking software. For television, I use this thing called a MUTE button. But I watch it so rarely that it hardly matters.

I don't see what the big deal is. Folks, this is not hard or radical, it's an easy habit. My life is rich and meaningful and totally enjoyable, and my conscience is clear that I'm doing things because I choose to do them, not because some voice has told me to do them.

Re:Still not a problem....

[NJRoadfan]

The reason I say "sane" is because you could've spend all that time you spent reading reviews simply doing some extra paid work. If you spent months reading reviews, you could have probably also spend those hours working, bought half a dozen coffee makers, threw away all but the one they liked and still have had more spare time and money left.

They call those people professional product reviewers, except the companies usually gives them the coffee makers for free in exchange for a generally biased positive review (so they get more freebies from the company in the future). People like to hate on Consumer Reports, but they are one of the rare places that actually buys all their reviewed products at full price from retailers eliminating a source of bias. Product research is important, but generally for expensive durable goods that you will use for a long period of time (like cars and washing machines).

Re:Still not a problem....

[camperdave]

That's why I've almost totally given up on most social networks. I meet new people by sending UDP packets to unusual ports at random IP addresses. I read server logs for people doing likewise. You meet some of the most interesting people that way. They're never stupid.

But if you want a deep, meaningful relationship, shouldn't you be using TCP packets? UDP is fine for a quick hookup, I suppose, but it takes a lot of work to maintain anything more substantial.

Re:Still not a problem....

[CCarrot]

The real problem is numbers

Oblig XKCD reference.

The real problem is averaging reviews based on assumed identical weighting. There has been some attempt to alleviate that with various 'helpfulness' systems (most helpful good review, most helpful bad review, was this review helpful to you? etc.) but like any open system, that can also be be gamed.

The only sure fire method to beat the -turfers is through a healthy dose of skepticism and doing your homework. Don't base buying decisions on the reviews from one or two sites, seek out more detailed reviews that discuss actual features and measurable performance criteria, and pay slightly more attention to the negative reviews than the positive (but again, seek correlation from other, non-associated sites wherever possible to fight the negative -turfers). And try to buy from sites/stores with a healthy return policy, in case you do get suckered even after all your research.

Oh yeah, last but most important of all, POST DETAILED REVIEWS YOURSELF! I know I'm guilty of skipping the reviews after my shiny new widget shows up, (both because they take a while to do if you do them right, and because I'm just too busy playing with my new toy) but I've been trying to be more proactive in this area lately. It's like OSS: if everybody takes and nobody contributes (except the -turfers, of course), pretty soon it's useless to everybody...

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:Stop Making up New Words

[loosescrews]

Here is a definition from the linked article:

"Evil crowdsourcing on a very large scale." Influencing public opinion with fake "grassroots" activity is known as astroturfing, leading Zhao to coin the term "crowdturfing," since it is done via large crowdsourcing sites.

Re:Stop Making up New Words

[camperdave]

Yes, stop making up new words... and start using words we already have. It's not a "water army", it's a "navy".

Mandatory Notice

[Anonymous Coward]

Please note that from this point on, comment direction and moderation in this topic will be managed by a Waggener Edstrom team on behalf of Microsoft. This is simply to ensure a positive and thoughtful discussion of Microsoft activities, and will not impact your Slashdot reading pleasure.

Note also that any further discussion of Waggener Edstrom's efforts on behalf of Microsoft will be moderated to -1.

"Monitoring conversations, including those that take place with social media, is part of our daily routine; our products can be used as early warning systems, helping clients with rapid response and crisis management.

http://waggeneredstrom.com/about/approach
http://waggeneredstrom.com/clients

Re:Mandatory Notice

[GameboyRMH]

I've been keeping track of the shills I run across in a journal entry:

http://slashdot.org/~GameboyRMH/journal/273120

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.

Re:Mandatory Notice

[somersault]

You ean you can't do this, or this? Interesting.

I know what you're trying to get at - doing those things in PowerShell is possibly more convenient if it's been designed from the ground up for a networked environment - but you shouldn't make the mistake of assuming that you can't do something in Linux just because you yourself do not know how. That's rather hypocritical after what you just said about Slashdotters not knowing how to use Windows.

sigh

[Black Parrot]

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

It's not like tv ads

[jopsen]

TV ads don't pose as reviews or recommendation by other follow consumers.
Also ads elsewhere are not posted without consent, the spam comment that show up on my blog are not ads placed with my consent (Note I have spam filter and personally reviews everything it doesn't kill).
It's equivalent to a people just putting ad-posters on your wall without your consent.

Furthermore it is the biggest threat to the free internet today, to some extent outright destroying the internet as we know it.
Evil is a strong word, but it's capitalization with total disregard for other peoples property and misleading to the degree that it's outright criminal.

Re:It's not like tv ads

[rust627]

For instance, the entry on the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation describes their marketing division as "a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first against the wall when the revolution comes", with a footnote to the effect that the editors would welcome applications from anyone interested in taking over the post of robotics correspondent.

Thank you Douglas Adams

The fiery pit of boiling death is reserved for the lawyers .............

A related fallout

[tanveer1979]

I don't know whether it falls in this category, but the ability to buy crowds for cheap is having interesting results.
A real case I observed recently.

A leading motorcycle manufacturer did a contest in Asia (over 6-7 countries). On their webpage, write some thing about yourself(related to touring). Depending upon the number of "votes" winner will be declared, and then the winner gets a 20,000$ bike or something like that.

The lead guy led till the second or third last day. I followed his posts on FB asking people for votes and all.
And then bam, on the last two days, an unknown came up with largest number of votes.

Most of his friends accused the organizer of rigging votes. After all, how could somebody with almost nil votes come on top.

What they do not realize, for 1000$ you can actually buy tonnes of votes from these crowdturfing sites.

For 1 cent, you can get one guy to vote, so 100,000 votes is quite a bit.

For a random guy, not clued to this, getting 5000-10000 votes can be an achievement, and beating 100,000 votes are next to impossible.

I have seen this happening in many online voting contests where prize money is huge.

Re:Stop Making up New Words ... said Ogg

[quixote9]

Back in Stone Age, we had one, two, many! words. Plenty for Ogg. Who need more?