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Florida Firm Sells Twitter Followers and Bots That Retweet Celebrities, Executives, and 'Influencers' (nytimes.com)
Over the weekend, The New York Times published an expose on an obscure American company called Devumi that sells Twitter followers and bots that automatically retweet celebrities, executives, social media "influencers" and anyone else who will pay. From the report: Devumi sells Twitter followers and retweets to celebrities, businesses and anyone who wants to appear more popular or exert influence online. Drawing on an estimated stock of at least 3.5 million automated accounts, each sold many times over, the company has provided customers with more than 200 million Twitter followers, a New York Times investigation found. The accounts that most resemble real people reveal a kind of large-scale social identity theft. At least 55,000 of the accounts use the names, profile pictures, hometowns and other personal details of real Twitter users, including minors, according to a Times data analysis.
[...] The actor John Leguizamo has Devumi followers. So do Michael Dell, the computer billionaire, and Ray Lewis, the football commentator and former Ravens linebacker. Kathy Ireland, the onetime swimsuit model who today presides over a half-billion-dollar licensing empire, has hundreds of thousands of fake Devumi followers, as does Akbar Gbajabiamila, the host of the show "American Ninja Warrior." Even a Twitter board member, Martha Lane Fox, has some. Hours after the report was published, New York attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, opened an investigation into Devumi. "Impersonation and deception are illegal under New York law," Mr. Schneiderman said. "We're opening an investigation into Devumi and its apparent sale of bots using stolen identities."
[...] The actor John Leguizamo has Devumi followers. So do Michael Dell, the computer billionaire, and Ray Lewis, the football commentator and former Ravens linebacker. Kathy Ireland, the onetime swimsuit model who today presides over a half-billion-dollar licensing empire, has hundreds of thousands of fake Devumi followers, as does Akbar Gbajabiamila, the host of the show "American Ninja Warrior." Even a Twitter board member, Martha Lane Fox, has some. Hours after the report was published, New York attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, opened an investigation into Devumi. "Impersonation and deception are illegal under New York law," Mr. Schneiderman said. "We're opening an investigation into Devumi and its apparent sale of bots using stolen identities."
... is a depressing rabbit hole.
I recommend we don't scrape the slime off.
Let it fester in a vacuum.
It's public masturbatory narcissism.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
If deception is illegal under NY law, why is the wallstreet allowed to operate; or any advertising for that matter?
What is the point of the retweet account? I have seen lots of them that just take something someone posts and retweets it. Heck there is a service I use to manage multiple social network accounts and it has a plugin that allows me to set up an account that does nothing but retweet what I post. I just dont see the need for it.
"Impersonation and deception are illegal under New York law,"
Since when is a twitter account considered a bona-fide persona for legal purposes?
It's one thing if you've got a Twitter account trying to act like an official mouthpiece like DeBlasio's office or DeBlasio himself. But a name retweeting or liking a post isn't impersonation. Deception? That 3.5 million retweets aren't a valid count of a posts accuracy? Likability? Popularity? What's being deceived? a "i like this" has no meaning unless you're a sheep. Likewise, a retweet doesn't mean something is liked or unliked.
Is this guy honestly insinuating that all tweets must be legally accurate?! How about RottenTomatoes? Amazon review scores?!
And what does this portend for Slashdot's mod system?
This is a very well researched NYT article. I can imagine this required quite a bit of data mining and analysis and must have been fun to investigate. Especially impressive the time charts illustrating the patterns which give away when followers were bought. I'm glad this is investigated as it would really bother me personally to have my profile been sold like in the case of Jessica in the story. Just one thing about the appearance of the article on the website: I know it looks cool with all this dynamic build up of the diagrams and pages. At the moment, as a reader I feel lost in a maze of dynamic text buildup and never know whether I have missed something. as scrolling modifies the page constantly. Still, this story is an eye opener.
More evidence that so-called 'social media' is a metasticized cancer on our civilization. Time for some serious chemo.
(Emphasis mine) If a company has policies it can't adequately enforce it should be held liable for, at minimum, false advertising. Either enforce the policies or abandon them. Enforcing policies only when it suits them commercially should fail any test of adequate enforcement.
Next up : You can buy Reddit upvotes and Facebook likes. Sky is blue, more at 11.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
Get fake friends here now. Cheap!
Years too late on this one guys.
Selling counterfeit profiles is one thing, but actually lying about the location of your business? Yeah, I can't see this ending well for German Calas (even if he did graduate Princeton when he was 10).
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
But the real Ms. Rychly [19 year old whose identity was stolen by Devumi] may soon leave Twitter for good. “I am probably just going to delete my Twitter account,” she said.
When the youngster's start abandoning a social media platform, it will eventually end up like Myspace.
In my experience
you're bat-shit insane if you think anyone cares
I glanced at the summary, and thought the name of the company was 'Devium'.
Take a concept word, like 'devious', and modify it to make your company name. Good job guys... almost :)
I have like 6 bots following me, how do I know they're bots? Because none of them are people I know or follow, and I don't promote my account because I've never twitted and have no plans to do so in the next year and a half.
into believing they are helping them get logged into twitter they use the account themselves the real person has no idea what the real password ever was.
There's a leeway otherwise journalists wouldn't be able to safely criticize the wealthy and powerful. This is a good thing. It's what makes America great. Very few others countries allow this. France and England don't.
American journalist can't deliberately lie though. They have to be fair. Tell both sides of the story. Ask both sides to comment and give them 24 hours t reply.
That Aziz story by BABE was shitty journalism. Only gave him 6 hours. BABE are scum but they were rewarded with millions of hits.
Twitter is the confetti of the internet.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...