Slashdot Mirror
The Underground Economy of Social Networks
An anonymous reader writes "In a new study, Barracuda Labs analyzed a random sampling of more than 70,000 fake Twitter accounts that are being used to sell fake Twitter followers. They also analyzed some of the people that are using such fake followers including the recent example of U.S. presidential candidate Mitt Romney's Twitter account. Between Facebook's 10-Q filing stating that 83 million of its accounts are fake, to Mitt Romney's Twitter account recently falling under scrutiny for suspicious followings, fake social network profiles are a hot topic at the moment. And these fake profiles are at the center of a very vibrant and growing underground economy. This underground economy consists of dealers who create and sell the use of thousands of fake social accounts, and abusers who buy follows or likes from these fake accounts to boost their perceived popularity, sell advertising based on their now large social audience or conduct other malicious activity."
How many fake accounts will it take to prop up Farcebook after they've forced Timelines on people and they begin the mass exodus to Google+
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Bulk shills are. Welcome to the future, where the difference between a valid viewpoint and an astroturfed attempt to hornswaggle you out of your own money and political power has shrunk to the imperceptible.
Whereas I previously liked all of Mitt Romney's policies and was going to vote for me, this shocking revelation that his Twitter follower count might be manipulated is just too much for me to swallow, so he loses my vote!
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I would have phrased this differently:
This underground economy consists of dealers who create and sell the use of thousands of fake social accounts, and abusers who buy follows or likes from these fake accounts to boost their perceived popularity, sell advertising based on their now large social audience or conduct other malicious activity."
We could probably go with something like this:
This underground economy consists of dealers who create and sell the use of thousands of fake social accounts, and suckers who buy follows or likes from these fake accounts to boost their perceived popularity while under the misguided impression that these numbers convince people to purchase their product
One "like" from a "friend" is worth a hundred thousand likes from random strangers (even if they're real people). And one detailed comment about a product from an actual trusted friend is worth more than a hundred thousand likes from friends.
fake Twitter accounts that are being used to sell fake Twitter followers
Why use twitter? It sounds more and more like that fight club speech WRT doing work at jobs we hate to buy things we don't need to impress people we don't like. Is there anyone still using twitter who is not a bot, bot dealer, or PR shill?
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
A better way to garner likes/follows is to offer something for it.
"Chance to win a free (item of desire), just retweet this and follow!"
"Receive free in-game armor for liking our game!"
or the one I actually make a fake facebook account to do on my defensive driving course...
"Like this service on Facebook and get the audio tracks for free!"
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
You can buy followers for FRIENDS or ENEMIES.
As such, someone may have bought you followers.
Imagine as a jr. high bullying move - buying 5000 twitter followers for the unpopular kid.
Then - announcing that unpopular kid has paid for followers.
Ha ha for everyone but the victim. (On the bright side, unpopular kid now has 5000 followers in addition to the kid's mom!)
I really couldn't care less about Twitter...and it surprises me that so many other people do. Ah well, to each their own.
Companies can already buy-in to get time, space, words or street creed in every media format. How is this different than Mittten's coughing up an ad during your favorite futurama episode?
is advertising. It needs to be pretty much removed from modern life. Attracts the slimiest motherfuckers.
there is a perception that anonymous accounts must be stamped out by google, facebook, twitter, etc. wrong approach
in truth, let anonymous accounts blossom by the ten, hundred, or thousandfold
instead, the option should be provided for people to choose one of their accounts to be certified as real, whatever that process may be (the process must be thought out, you can hack anything, but the process must be as foolproof as possible)
people who want real metrics, real voting, real value, real financials, etc., can therefore choose to refrain certian transactions to only certified accounts. then let the bilgewater anonymous drek do as it wants, not affecting those things which the internet holds great promise to do, but is currently held back to due anonymous douchebaggery
ps: of course there are valid uses for anonymity. i don't need to the hear the arguments for anonymity, i understand them. you need to understand i am making a place for anonymity in this scheme of certification, and you also need to understand that there is plenty the internet promises to do (such as voting and certain financial transactions) that anonymity ruins
so the emphasis then becomes on not negative proof: stamping out every anonymous account, which is impossible and a ridiculously huge undertaking. the emphasis becomes one of positive proof: self-chosen inclusiveness and opt-in. for those who choose not to be anonymous, certain new abilities on the internet become possible. for everyone else who chooses to remain anonymous, carry on, status quo unaffected
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I think conservatives prefer Twitter, because what passes for "thinking" for the Right are slogans and canned talking points that fit into 140 characters.
Might also explain why up-and-coming tory politicians on both sides of the pond keep getting caught buying thousands of fake Twitter followers. It boosts their credibility with those who swim in the shallower end of the gene pool, in a manner of speaking...
It's a free market without pesky government regulations
The market will eventually sort itself out.
Businesses who stupidly buy into those fake accounts will lose money and eventually collapse, then the fake account sellers have nobody to sell to, and they'll go away (or find some other scheme to make money off stupid people)
For those of your lucky enough to have friended family teens on FB, or maybe you are one, but if you haven't noticed there are a ton of entities out there making teen-oriented versus-oriented info graphics that encourage "like" or "share" (i.e. iphone: like, blakberry: share). I figure this has to be a not-so-elaborate way of getting info on users preferences. But the teenage demographic seems targeted. And all this has to be a reason. There's also the get "2000 friends posts" just by liking this.
I want to know what our family members are really doing by participating. How is this information being used?
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
If you aren't the one holding the gun, then you have no political power.
Welcome to the future, where the difference between a valid viewpoint and an astroturfed attempt to hornswaggle you out of your own money and political power has shrunk to the imperceptible.
Indeed, the very story submission itself was crafted by the Democratic party... it would have been pretty easy to write up a less obviously partisan story summary but they couldn't be bothered to even try and hide.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Our paper from November 2011, "Social is bad for search, and search is bad for social", covered this last year.
Barracuda Networks doesn't even seem to have published a paper. (The article linked in the Slashdot article is a scraper site for press releases.) The Barracuda press release points to an "infographic" and a blog posting which, as their only outside source, links to a black hat site.
Barracuda doesn't seem to have discovered the extent of the social spamming ecosystem. We identified at least 6 levels:
This structure insulates the legitimate businesses who use ad agencies from the criminal activity at the bottom. Except for the botnet operators, everybody in that ecosystem has some kind of web presence, although towards the bottom, they usually have only Skype and Gmail accounts as contacts. I'm not going to link to them here, but our paper gives actual names.
I guess I missed out on this part of 21st century culture, but who the fuck cares about the "perceived popularity" of anything? Whatever happened to making up your own mind? Do people really even pay the slightest bit of attention to how many "likes" something has?
It's bewildering. Seems to be a substitute for thinking for yourself.
Link to full research blog post: http://www.barracudalabs.com/wordpress/index.php/2012/08/03/the-twitter-underground-economy-a-blooming-business/
That's why I never took Klout.com seriously.
There are two kinds of fake Facebook accounts.
The first kind are ones that are just spambots.
The second kind are ones where the people using them, due to the pervy privacy-hating nature of Facebook, don't give personal information like their cell phone number or other data and refuse to let themselves be facially identified.
Please be precise.
There are also ones for children (like my sisters have for their kids, but only the mom knows the password and uploads pics and approves all postings), pets (similar, if you like pics of cats and dogs), and professional versus personal accounts (I myself have three accounts, only two of which you may be able to find).
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
It's what alternate accounts are all about!
I'm sure Obama doesn't have ANY fake followers.
Seriously, Slashdot - stay the fuck out of politics and get back to your role.
How much do high scoring slashdot comments cost?
From what I understood when the feature first arrived, the receiver of the likes (businesses, at least) get access to demographic and friend-list data. In other words, the same info that is being harvested when you add a facebook app.
The only time I'm actually posting as the real me rather than some artificial persona is when I'm posting anonymously.