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?
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...
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.
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
If you aren't the one holding the gun, then you have no political power.
Pithy; but mostly false. In basically any polity as large/complex or larger than 'barbarian warband' actually holding the gun is a rather entry level task, typically handled by the actual leader's lackies. At the 'barbarian warband' level the strongman might occasionally have to do it himself; but even there it will be his charisma and burly friends and/or non-traitorous-family who keep somebody from just stabbing him in the eye while he sleeps...
If anything, "political" institutions are really an exercise in nothing so much as the mitigation of direct gun handling, through a combination of institutional compliance(ie. they don't say force of law for nothing; but the overwhelming majority of compliance requires zero cops to achieve) and relatively small(and, if one is both competent and lucky, tame) violence specialists to deal with any exceptions to the former.
No, if you aren't the one with the money. Because if you have money, you can hire more guns, and bigger guns.
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)
Except that doesn't happen. And I'd really be surprised if any business other than those already on shaky ground would go under because of buying fake accounts. If they did, then they'd have other, larger problems that led to their collapse, not buying fake accounts.
I highly doubt that IBM would go under from buying fake accounts any time soon.
"Leadership is mostly a power over imagination, and never more so than in combat. The bravest man alone can only be an armed lunatic. The real strength lies in the ability to get others to do your work."
Lois McMasters Bujold, _Shards of Honor_ (Captain Aral Vorkosigan)
And when the more and bigger guns decide they like your money more than you, what then?
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.
That's the point of the intelligence test. They need to be sufficiently stupid that they can't replace you, but sufficiently intelligent that they realise this. Alternatively, you can go for Hitler's strategy and give overlapping areas of responsibility to different groups with guns, so that they're too busy with infighting that they don't get around to deposing you.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Link to full research blog post: http://www.barracudalabs.com/wordpress/index.php/2012/08/03/the-twitter-underground-economy-a-blooming-business/
You can be more subtle than that. For example, buy a load of followers / friends for a Republican candidate that spend most of their time posting Hitler quotes, or for a Democrat candidate that spend most of their time posting Stalin quotes. Then use the same 'look what crazy people support this candidate' technique that worked so well on the Tea Party and OWS.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
That's why I never took Klout.com seriously.
If you aren't the one that can pull the trigger...
I drank what? -- Socrates
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! --
Not so, in those close political races separated by only a few votes. Each voter in those elections wielded enormous power to allocate budgets, pass laws to fix our problems, or steal our liberties, or give money to local contractors, or raise taxes, or vote in additional tax breaks. The best that someone holding a gun has done lately is kill a few dozen people watching Batman and worshiping in a Temple. I think the gun/power thing is really overshadowed by the power of the vote. It does make some people think they are big men, at least within that small circle they can actually hit a target in. Think larger all you gun people, it the vote that packs the punch and at much longer distances and for a much longer time. An if you you are thinking of a revolution against the government, well the vote is the orderly way we do things in the U.S. and no one needs to get killed. (Someone should have told that fellow that shot Gabby Gifford).
And for you first person shooter game enthusiasts, they are starting to bring in voting machines so you can even vote via video game.
How much do high scoring slashdot comments cost?
Yeah, I definitely think it's time for Slashdot to get back to its roots - "News for nerds, stuff that matters, unless it's embarrassing to the Republicans".
That said, the revelation in this Slashdot article is hardly news or previously unheard of, as usual. Nor should the number of Twitter followers or Likes matter, but quite obviously there are many who believe they do.
Just to quote the above news article as a teaser, "We subjected Barack Obama's account, @BarackObama, to the same analysis."
"Each voter in those elections wielded enormous power [...] The best that someone holding a gun has done lately is kill a few dozen people"
Therefore, killing a few dozen of those enormously powered voters *is* a lot of power, isn't it?
Point well taken, of course you have to fear that doing that angers voters who vote anti-gun laws and they come and take away your guns with the military and tanks to back them up. So it may not be wise to piss of the electorate. You see what they did with prohibition of alcohol and now with tobacco. You miss-behave and your next on the legislation list.
Is IBM buying fake accounts? I don't know, but if they are, and they aren't going under, then they probably aren't buying them stupidly.
1). I don't actually know if they are buying fake accounts or not; they were just an example of a company that is plenty big enough to buy accounts stupidly and not really feel any penalty for it.
2). Just because a company isn't going under doesn't mean that buying the fake accounts isn't stupid. Likewise, just because a company is going under doesn't mean that buying the fake accounts is stupid.