Slashdot Mirror
Battling Fake Accounts, Twitter To Slash Millions of Followers (nytimes.com)
Twitter will begin removing tens of millions of suspicious accounts from users' followers on Thursday, signaling a major new effort to restore trust on the popular but embattled platform. From a report: The reform takes aim at a pervasive form of social media fraud. Many users have inflated their followers on Twitter or other services with automated or fake accounts, buying the appearance of social influence to bolster their political activism, business endeavors or entertainment careers. Twitter's decision will have an immediate impact: Beginning on Thursday, many users, including those who have bought fake followers and any others who are followed by suspicious accounts, will see their follower numbers fall. While Twitter declined to provide an exact number of affected users, the company said it would strip tens of millions of questionable accounts from users' followers.
Can they actually eliminate fake accounts faster than they are being created?
When they figure out how to weed out fake account, could they share their knowledge with NextDoor.com?
Even the most obvious fakes are approved, and seldom deleted. In fact, complaining about the fakes will get you suspended.
In my neighborhood, we have/had:
- Jack Mehoff
- Pat McGroin
- Flappy Flapstick
- Elenor Capstick (seems innocuous, until "she" posts back-to-back comments with Flappy Flapstick)
- A fake reporter and fake executive producer of news from a local TV station. I reported it to the TV station. It wasn't them. They were contacting people about doing "stories".
These along with more than a dozen others are/were all the same person, apparently somebody unhappy with their HOA. They post as their neighbors who are not signed-up with Nextdoor on some of the fake accounts. I got stuck in the middle of this by trying to be nice and helping somebody sort Internet provider options. I got suspicious when "Pat McGroin" (how did I miss that?!) said that he lived in a complex for the developmentally disabled. ("We are all developmentally disabled up in here" was my first clue this was not genuine...) He went from asking for help about Internet providers to fake claims of elder abuse.
So, I Googled, expecting to find a group home, etc.. Nope, a normal condo complex with units selling from $500K to $700K. And one ass-pain homeowner who harasses the HOA and neighbors any way he can.
NextDoor apparently doesn't even make the most basic of checks. This guy logs-out and then right back in under a different account. I can guarantee he isn't using burner phones or posting from multiple Internet cafes. They give users "invitations" that they can use to invite others, and they are probably automatically approved without any checks - because of the fallacy that the inviter is a legitimate account. As well, "neighborhood leads" have super cow powers, and can approve new users. So, it only takes one bad apple to either hand out their 25 invitations to fakes, or become neighborhood lead and then approve fake accounts.
In case you're not familiar - NextDoor is a hyper-local site that limits visibility to immediate and nearby neighborhoods. They require real names and verify identity and residence. In theory.
NextDoor wants users to fell "safe" on their site. It is anything but.