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Twitter's Fake Followers Watching IPO Closely

Posted by samzenpus on from the keeping-it-real dept.

kraksmoka writes "Is your social media pro 'making it go viral' by pressing a button instead of interacting with a real audience? The purchase and use of fake followers by small to mid-sized social media agencies is rising on Twitter and there is concern that the growth of fake followers can't be stopped. "

10 of 120 comments (clear)

  1. This is relevant to my interests by paiute · · Score: 4, Funny

    As a fake investor, I will follow this development closely.

    --
    If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
  2. Re:What's the point? by Joining+Yet+Again · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Real people are more likely to follow something that seems popular, no matter how broken it is.

    See also Microsoft, Christianity, the Soviet Union, capitalism, and American Football.

  3. Paid commentors by globaljustin · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Virtually all the posters here appear genuine

    browse at -1 and have a look at the comments...i mod often and you're right /. is *definitely* more genuine than most... /. is crawling with paid Public Relations staffers (Fox News is def. not the only one to do this), paid commentors, and maybe even an actual experimental bot (APK...)

    They ruin the top of the comments on anything to do with Snowden, the oil industry, and the Trayvon Martin case type stuff....techies havent' gotten *more* conservative in the last 10 years...but /. comments on average have...it's because of PR and paid commentors

    We *genuine* humans need to be more discerning than ever...there are people, much like us, whose entire job is to create false perceptions on things like /.

    Its kind of important, for you know, idea neutrality that we all be smarter, respond to only comments that are value added and of course...and I need this advice as much as anyone...

    ***DONT FEED THE TROLLS***

    --
    Thank you Dave Raggett
    1. Re:Paid commentors by game+kid · · Score: 4, Interesting

      A moderator a day keeps the Real Name policies away.

      --
      You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
    2. Re:Paid commentors by Joining+Yet+Again · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Yes exactly. Every scheme has "salt of the earth" people who just want to do an honest day's work, exploitative dickheads at the top, and a mixture half way between the two. That Bible-bashing gun-worshipper is probably just as decent, honest and hardworking as the girl who makes peace signs and sticks flowers in her hair, but they are taught to hate each other.

    3. Re:Paid commentors by Joining+Yet+Again · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I'm as far from "poor student" as you can get, so no vested interest here!

      If there is anything you should learn with age, it's JUST HOW MUCH you owe to other people, without whom you'd be scraping around in the dirt, no matter your personal opinion of your own genius. If you think that people are sponging off you, you're learning nothing at all, and just taking advantage of others.

  4. not the same 'conservative' by globaljustin · · Score: 3, Informative

    I addressed the "more conservative" thing above to another commenter...the definition of 'conservative' in those studies and 'conservative' in US politics is **very** different and completely unfit for comparison...

    It measures 'conservative' in the sense of risk taking...like would you cash some of your kid's college fund to invest in a stock tip from a trusted friend?

    younger...more likely
    older...less likely

    That doesn't mean that getting older makes you favor policies that protect companies like M$ and become pro-life!!!!

    Those studies mean 'conservative' in risk-taking...not politics and policy!!!!

    --
    Thank you Dave Raggett
  5. Fake followers - fake profits by Chemisor · · Score: 5, Informative

    It is mind boggling that people are evidently buying this stock without having looked at their finances, easily available from Google. Surely they would have noticed that Twitter has negative net income of -$64M. Worse, it looks like have had net losses in each of the last three years and their losses appear to be accelerating downward (see graph on top of the page) even with increasing revenue. I have no idea how anybody came up with a $20 market cap value. To me they look like an overpriced loser on their way to bankruptcy.

    1. Re:Fake followers - fake profits by hardtofindanick · · Score: 4, Informative

      You sound like a typical rational person. You should know by now markets only care about perception, expectation, and potential.

  6. Re:A simple tech solution by sinij · · Score: 4, Interesting

    >>>Twitter can determine when, where, and from what IP address an account is created.
     
    I expect ./ crowd to at least understand that IP is not a reliable identifier. Twitter can only reliably determine when, everything else they know only if bot creator did not bother to spoof it. Behavior-based detection is also problematic - you can easily scrape existing activity, filter out swearing and specific identities, substitute location identifiers for something local and have 100% undetectable bot.

    Example: Scrape small-town phone book, run permutation algorithm on second name and street # to avoid collision with real people (but keep everything else intact), add random gender-appropriate picture and follow a random set of big news and artists at creation. Pipe this through TOR, stagger your account creation to avoid tripping volume detection and mind timezones for posting and registering. Proceed to post random scraped tweets that are filtered for positive-biased sentiment.