

Fake Twitter followers - joewooglin
http://www.itworld.com/cloud-computing/351914/fake-twitter-followers-one-more-thing-justin-bieber-and-bill-gates-have-commo

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benologist
Ironic considering the fake HN users ITWorld has been running for years.

<https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=joewooglin>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=tech77>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=jfruhlinger>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=abennett>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=bdking>

~~~
fpp
and they want to run an app against your twitter account that can post and
change your profile

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davecap1
I built twitteraudit.com for fun to find out if people purchased followers.

Like the article says, these tools work best for people with less than about
500k followers... because once you cross that threshold, you get closer to the
actual ratio of real/fake users on all of Twitter.

It's not hard to see who is likeley to have bought a ton of fake followers:
<http://www.twitteraudit.com/michaelgonline>
<http://www.twitteraudit.com/FidelHerrera>
<http://www.twitteraudit.com/hackmurphy>

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citricsquid
You can't apply this methodology to accounts belonging to such large
celebrities for one important reason: when registering for a Twitter account
you're prompted to follow "recommended" people. Someone could be told about
Twitter, register an account, click "follow all" on the recommended page and
then never sign in again... Justin Bieber would have gained a _legitimate_
follower but they wouldn't seem real.

This methodology can only really be applied to smaller accounts, ones that
have not had exposure through the Twitter recommended users system.

Here is an example, after creating an account you go through an introductory
process that requires you to follow at least 5 people to continue:
<http://i.imgur.com/xT0tc5c.png> and then on the next page you have to follow
another 5.

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nwzpaperman
Not to split hairs, but what's the difference between a bot logging in one
time and following a bunch of people never to log in again and a breathing
human being doing the same?

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Alterlife
From the article:

[quote]

> They use a number of different criteria to identify fake Twitter accounts,
> including:

> The account is following less than 50 people and has less than one follower

> More than 30% of all tweets use spam phrases, such as “diet,” “make money,”
> and “work from home”

> The account is more than two months old and still has a default profile
> image

[/quote]

I don't know exactly how these things were weighted to decide that an account
is fake... but apart from the second point, it sounds like "Fake" account
could be more like "I signed up just to follow this guy and then forgot about
it" account.

~~~
shuri
It's actually very hard (at least or even) for humans to categorize twitter
users as spammer/fake or real.

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ajanuary
> The account is following less than 50 people and has less than one follower

So ... has no followers then?

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recursive
It sounds like my twitter account is fake. I don't produce. I only consume.

