
Twitter Bots Use Likes, RTs for Intimidation - willvarfar
http://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/08/twitter-bots-use-likes-rts-for-intimidation/
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chippy
I've pared down my twitter usage and who I follow, and increased the use of
words to mute. I regularly delete old tweets. In a way, the golden days of
Twitter occured when we all were on it, the early adopters. It appears to me
that the rapid growth of the platform has not been accompanied by a rapid
growth in, well, growth management. Spammers, politics, ideological motivated
manual censorship / safety council, bots, spam, flame wars etc, It used to be
about broadcasting your current status - the status like what you would update
on your instant messaging client. The chase to get as many people on it as
possible leaves huge holes for bots.

~~~
rainbowmverse
I made my first Twitter account shortly after it launched, so there's a good
chance I'm an earlier adopter than most people who complain about how it's
changed.

Many would, unfortunately, read any of my LGBTQ friends (for example) venting
about the harassment they get for who they are as "political." What's
political/ideological/junk/whatever to one person is a central and valuable
function of the platform to others. This is their "current status," which they
broadcast, and it's unavoidably political because certain groups have decided
to politicize innocent and harmless attributes.

I would not have met my best friend, who I can talk to about this stuff when
Twitter seems inappropriate, without Twitter. For you, it's a place to chill
and chat. For me and many like me, it's a lifeline in hostile territory.

~~~
chippy
When did Twitter turn into hostile territory? Or are you saying that the world
outside of Twitter is hostile and Twitter is some way of dealing with that in
the present day?

I remember when people started being harassed on Twitter, and it wasn't close
to the launch, rather it was when it was sometime after it became massively
popular. If we can try to remember we will see that it was different back then
when we were early adopters.

~~~
rainbowmverse
Outside world. You should get to know your LGBTQ and other marginalized
friends better if you aren't aware of how bad things are. Twitter may have
been the first place they found anyone else like them. Even accepting
environments (rare) can be difficult to cope with if you have no one to talk
to who really understands what it's like.

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stugots
Easy answer: Stop using Twitter. Stop caring about Twitter. We have the power
to kill this nonsense in two seconds -- we only need the will to do so and if
we don't we're to blame.

I stopped using Twitter and I'm happier.

~~~
l0b0
First Facebook, then LinkedIn, and recently Twitter are gone from my life, and
good riddance! Now if anyone wants to figure out what's happening in my life
they know how to reach me, and we can both have the pleasure of actual social
interaction.

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sideproject
It says Twitter doesn't allow automated likes, which is what bots usually do.

[https://support.twitter.com/articles/76915](https://support.twitter.com/articles/76915)

D. Automated actions you take on Tweets or accounts

Automated likes: You may not like Tweets in an automated manner.

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seanwilson
How difficult is it to detect Twitter bots? I would have thought there'd be
lots of obvious signals (who the bot is friends with, what they post, how
often they post, how old their account is).

~~~
weego
It must be relatively easy to find bots, but I imagine Twitter has a decent
size ecosystem of neutral / positive bots for various QoL tasks that would be
collateral damage as intent is much harder to determine.

~~~
ablation
It feels as though Twitter has a vested interest in making its network seem as
active as possible, irrespective of quality of interaction. In a way,
Twitter's userbase appears like a captive audience - they've no desire to
leave, no matter how bad it gets. Oddly masochistic in a way.

~~~
rmetzler
You could argue that twitter bots don't do much damage. If you don't want to
follow a bot, just don't follow them. They should be easily recognizable.

People who did the auto-follow thing were screwed though.

~~~
ablation
No, that's not how Twitter bots work. They damage the overall ecosystem in
both active and passive ways. Of course you can choose to not follow
someone/something, but they can still harm your experience as a user.

~~~
rmetzler
Someone should create a pattern catalog for bots to enable easier discussion
about them.

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cdevs
Odd place for me to ask this but does anyone know what's with the ring of
twitter user wth the usernames ending in gives,gibs, givs as in johnGivs,
jasonGives as an example. They all say they will release account "methods" for
Spotify, Apple, PlayStation , steam etc for retweets. I came across the
pattern a few weekends ago noticing they say to each other they keep their
accounts on ghost script and they were all mad it was down one night. Is this
just a ring of stolen accounts or stolen account cards?

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aussieguy123
So...someone could write their own twitter bots that trigger these russian
troll bots with their trigger keywords. Then the russian troll bots will waste
their time trolling the wrong accounts and make themselves look silly at the
same time.

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wordpressdev
I made my Twitter account in 2007. Those were the days. Now, the platform is
the mostly used for propaganda, perception building, marketing and hate
mongering.

Also, there are no friends or foes on Twitter, only interests.

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johnchristopher
What a coincidence, I just saw one today in a highly political thread. Just
goes to show I should stay away from political stuff on twitter.

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laretluval
Where's the evidence that these are bots?

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notahacker
Regardless of motives, I think it's blindingly obvious that getting _500
retweets within nine minutes_ for "wonder whether the use of the @DFRLab
handle and talking about a bot attack is enough to trigger one" involves
someone or some algorithm triggering a Twitter botnet.

It's not like the original tweet was so entertaining that everybody seeing it
would want to share or the original tweeter had more than a few hundred
followers

