
A Facebook bot purge clobbered USA Today - r721
https://www.cjr.org/tow_center/facebook-usa-today.php
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mrmcd
Instead of crazy conspiracy theories, how about this: USA Today isn't actually
that popular, but some botnet programmer with an imperfect understanding of
American culture thought it was a brand ordinary Americans all love and read
regularly. So they were all instructed to follow their page in an attempt to
make the bots look legit.

~~~
remarkEon
USA Today has the highest circulation in traditional newspapers. Not really
sure why that is, but my guess would be that they have some enduring
relationships with hotel/motel chains. It's definitely a brand that resonates.

Source: [https://www.infoplease.com/arts-entertainment/newspapers-
and...](https://www.infoplease.com/arts-entertainment/newspapers-and-
magazines/top-100-newspapers-united-states)

~~~
tgb
USA Today was the first newspaper of its kind. Flashier, more concise,
graphic-laden news. A larger focus on celebrity, entertainment, etc. news.
From wikipedia on USA Today: "derided by critics, who referred to it as
"McPaper" or "television you can wrap fish in," ". It was the Buzzfeed of its
time.

~~~
pducks32
I never really thought of that but that is a fantastic analogy.

~~~
DonHopkins
USA Toady: for people who think television news is too complicated.

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rubyn00bie
I'm perplexed here how there doesn't seem to be talk of the fact Facebook had
5.6 million bots disappear in one purge.

In almost every Twitter thread on here there is plenty of disparaging talk
about bots and how it makes the social network's MAUs distorted or make it
less valuable. Yet, here is quite obviously an indication that Facebook
suffers from the same-- if not worse problem because it's a walled garden and
less easily viewed.

If anything I'd suspect that an inordinate amount of users on Facebook and its
MAUs are bots because of this... that the problem may in fact be more prolific
than twitters but goes unnoticed because we can't browse Facebook like we can
twitter. It would certainly be a more valuable target as a result since people
falsely believe in Facebook's metrics-- versus, say Twitter, where advertisers
can see the bots.

... I'm just befuddled right now that the conversation is about how the bots
liked a USA Today page and not the bots themselves. Maybe I missed the
previous discussion. If I was USA Today, I'd certainly consider dumping any
effort for Facebook as the numbers and metrics cannot at all be trusted to be
real.

~~~
dave5104
Facebook reported 1.23 billion daily active users as of last December [0]. 5.6
million bots is only 0.46% of the "user" base, so in terms of raw number of
users it doesn't really seem all that bad.

I would be curious, however, how much engagement that 0.46% accounted for.
Didn't seem like much since the article mentions USA Today not seeing much of
a dip in engagements.

[0] [https://newsroom.fb.com/company-info/](https://newsroom.fb.com/company-
info/)

~~~
SomeStupidPoint
This was only one purge tipped off by USA Today.

I would guess that Facebook has 10-20x that number of bots total, since this
appeared to be a single network that hadn't become "active" (as per the
story).

A quick Google puts Twitter at 9-15% bots, which makes the estimates roughly
line up with what I'd expect: Twitter is slightly worse (2-3x bot
concentration) but the two aren't incomparably different.

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shshhdhs
My wife just experienced something that makes me assume Facebook's bot/abuse
algorithm is malfunctioning.

She just tried to "sell" something for free on Facebook Marketplace. Due to
the popularity, she received 100+ messages in a minute -- the notifications
were rolling on her phone.

Shortly thereafter, Facebook locked her out of her account for 72 hours and
asked her to verify her identity. I guess they thought she was a bot? Which is
strange because why would a bot want to receive 100 messages rather than
sending them?

~~~
jdalgetty
Ok, so I got locked out of my account last night for 72 hours. I have no idea
why. I had to upload an image of myself for their team to verify. I wasn't
doing anything odd whatsoever. Still waiting for my account to be reactivated.

~~~
cryptarch
Maybe they just wanted a picture of you?

~~~
jdalgetty
One can dream!

~~~
StavrosK
You're beautiful.

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brianbreslin
Maybe I'm jumping to conclusions, but it seems to me like they had engaged
some "social media marketing" firm that was using these like bots as part of
their tool kit and were probably getting paid by USAToday on a performance
basis.

~~~
tedmiston
Actually I think it hurts them to have a large number of inactive followers.

> While USA Today’s horde of fake followers did not appear to “like” or
> comment on posts at a significant clip, the presence of so many of them
> could serve to muddle the rate at which the audience was engaging with
> content.

~~~
jklinger410
Yes, a poo follower to share/like ratio actually damages the reach of your
posts.

~~~
tedmiston
That made me wonder if it could possibly be a competitor inadvertently taking
control over their page by saturating it with inactive followers.

Then again if the accounts themselves are inactive in general, not just on
this page, maybe it's something Facebook accounts for… maybe not… hard to say.

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lingben
for a fantastic expose of how facebook is riddled with fraud and bots, check
out veritasium's two videos:

facebook fraud
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVfHeWTKjag](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVfHeWTKjag)

the problem with facebook
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9ZqXlHl65g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9ZqXlHl65g)

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coldcode
I never like anything on FB; I've always assumed it a pointless waste telling
no one anything useful since it is so (apparently) easy to scam. I wonder if
you should have a certain level of activity for a reasonable period of time
before you are counted for anything real.

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inlined
I wonder if this was somehow an attempt to censor USA Today? This many
followers that don't engage decreases the odds of their posts showing up in
users' news feeds.

Fun conspiracy though it's probably more likely that they were a seed in a
botnet algorithm.

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Neliquat
Okay, on the face, this looks bad... What are some legit reasons this would
happen? Other than a marketing person going insane over metrics, why would you
bother?

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Sir_Cmpwn
USA Today could be a credible source for bots to follow for free to increase
their own legitimacy.

~~~
yellow_viper
How does it increase the legitimacy? Page likes aren't public (when viewing
from/as the page).

~~~
nols
People follow pages and join groups and all that, so bots have to do that as
well to blend in. It's to make the bot more legitimate.

~~~
netsharc
I'm not sure they're bots, rather people cheaply paid to create fake accounts,
or scammers. I've seen many of them, and some of them are quite amateurish.
They would say they went to Florida University and come from Florida City,
working in... oil.

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thekevan
It sounds like of no fault of their own, USA Today was a god FB resource to
like and shape in order to build fake profiles.

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jsemrau
Now I understand how Facebook as 1.4 Billion monthly active users.

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SippinLean
Headline sounds interesting, any sources without interstitial ads? I saw one
on this article and obviously left immediately never to return.

