
Twitter Takes Aim at Anonymous Egg Accounts - redraga
https://www.wired.com/2017/03/twitter-abuse-tools/
======
notadoc
There are massive bot farms on Twitter that are obvious to even casual
observers and most of them don't have "egg" accounts anymore. Look at the
auto-replies to any political tweet, major news story, or from a popular
account, all automated garbage that follows the same template.

Why Twitter ignores the crap which pollutes their product is amazing to me.
Maybe they don't want to touch them because it ups the engagement numbers and
inflates active users?

~~~
Grollicus
"500.000 new Members last month!!1" (I just totally made that up)

I suspect its the same as facebooks "2 Billion Users" \- its just good for PR
to have huge numbers. If you look too closely you might even lose Members in a
Month, and we all know "growth" is very important..

~~~
Balgair
You know, I could see ol' Zuck sitting there in his Herman-Miller Aeron chair
looking at the internal numbers of FB 'users' and seeing the number be ~15
billion accounts that their in-house 'bot filters still think are 'real'
people. He says to himself: 'You know, _maybe_ I could tell the UN that there
really are 15 billion people out there and they are all on FB. Ha, I mean, a
lot of people _really might_ believe me.' He looks out the window, sighs, and
puts out an email via Thunderbird to the marketing team leads that says to
keep the number at 2 billion.

~~~
Taylor_OD
Do you have a blog? Genuine question.

~~~
Balgair
Nah, it's best to keep the ranting low-key and not tied to me personally. If
you see my comment karma, I say enough dumb stuff already ;)

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arprocter
Interested to see how penalizing accounts for 'repeatedly tweeting at non-
followers' is going to work when most of what I see on the platform is people
messaging celebs who don't follow them back

~~~
65827
This is what I was going to post, seems to be about 90% of the activity on
twitter. They seem to only care about the experience from the perspective of
the haves, anyone else just isn't part of the conversation.

~~~
jsonne
I think this is a good example of how optimizing for the power user, at a
large scale, can actually be detrimental.

~~~
xadhominemx
How do you know that? The changes have not yet taken effect.

~~~
Drumlin
One of the main problems with Twitter is people sign up and don't know what to
do with it - except message famous people. If Twitter prevents the plebs from
shouting at the intelligentsia then it will make the platform even more
irrelevant. The last time I used it, it was like talking into a void and that
was with hundreds of real followers.

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birdman3131
So because I see no reason to upload a photo my 7 year old twitter account is
now considered second rate whereas the bot account created last week is not
because it was updated to upload a random profile image.

Seems a bit like trying to claim they are doing something while nothing
important gets done.

~~~
tomjen3
I hope they are smarter than that. Don't forget the Gell-Man effect amnesia
effect.

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unethical_ban
Today, the egg, tomorrow, unverified account names. Are they going full
Facebook?

And filtering out keywords in messages... I suppose that's ok, and certainly
their prerogative, but talk about creating more social bubbles. As much as I
disagree with the random twits on the site, it reminds me that not everyone is
a left-leaning political hobbyist. Hearing things you don't necessarily like
is part of being an adult.

~~~
eropple
Having concerted bombs of right-wing harassment drop on one's head for having
the temerity to do something like "be a woman with political opinions" is
_not_ part of being an adult. And that's the reality of Twitter right now.

This isn't nearly enough; actually showing the trackable legions of smurf-
account harassers the door might be beyond Twitter's meager capabilities at
the moment (after all, they only have a small army of developers, right?), but
implementing BlockTogether as a first-party tool, including "automatically
block accounts under X days old that @ me", is just part of being a decent
host.

~~~
iamatworknow
The question then becomes is the necessity of having a twitter account "part
of being an adult"? I'm not saying the harassment is right, mind you, and
certainly doxxing and real physical threats should be treated as the criminal
acts that they are, but I don't think it's something that can ever really be
remedied unless the victim removes themselves from the situation.

As I see it there is a sort of give and take relationship with inherently
public social media like twitter. Your comments and thoughts are presented to
a wide audience, but that inherently subjects you to possible dissenting
opinions or harassment from that audience. The alternative is to, say, create
a personal blog. You could write your opinions all day there and nobody will
judge them or attack you for them, because without a lot of effort in SEO and
marketing, nobody will ever see them.

Most people oppose bullying in school because kids "have" to go to school, so
in a sense they're forced into the environment and should not be subject to
attacks there. But who is forcing you to be on twitter?

~~~
eropple
_> The question then becomes is the necessity of having a twitter account
"part of being an adult"? I'm not saying the harassment is right, mind you,
and certainly doxxing and real (as in tangible) physical threats should be
treated as the criminal acts that they are, but I don't think it's something
that can ever really be remedied unless the victim removes themselves from the
situation._

Oh, then we should just give up and let literal white supremacists and anti-
feminists and gay-bashers chase the weakest among us out of the social
discourse. I'm sure that isn't a political tactic being employed intentionally
against them or anything.

Or, you know, _we can fucking not do that_.

Stop normalizing evil. Doing so literally-not-figuratively arms those who
would do harm to the people among us who need our support. Show _them_ the
door, not their victims.

~~~
iamatworknow
These people have always existed. They will continue to exist. They will
continue to find ways to harass the people they see as easy targets because
they find enjoyment in it. Nothing you can say or do, no policies twitter puts
in place, will ever eradicate them. At best it will slow them down. There's
always some work around and they have lives sad enough to dedicate to finding
these work-arounds.

For all of human existence up until last decade, these types of people didn't
have a wide social outlet for their thoughts, just like everyone else didn't.
Now it's open to everyone. Yes, it's morally reprehensible. But this is not
something that we or any social media company can ever solve. It will always
be a cat and mouse game. But it's a game that you don't have to play.

You can still be a citizen of the 21st century world and not be on social
media. It does not put you at any disadvantage to not have a twitter account.
If you believe that it would, reconsider your priorities in life.

~~~
Analemma_
> You can still be a citizen of the 21st century world and not be on social
> media. It does not put you at any disadvantage to not have a twitter
> account. If you believe that it would, reconsider your priorities in life.

This is analogous to all those arguments that "If you have nothing to hide,
you have ", or, "If you want privacy, you always have the option to become a
hermit and live completely off the grid with no contact with friends or
family" What if I want privacy _and_ to participate in modern society? Why
should I have to choose?

It's the same here: Twitter, for all its faults, is very useful. Why should I
have to choose between not using it and enduring a bunch of abuse on it, if
Twitter can fix that? To protect the "right" of some anonymous shitheads to
have victims be forced to listen to their harassment? Please.

You keep replying in this thread but you keep making the same error because
you're starting from the axiom that "blocking is bad" and deducing forward
from there. I reject that axiom.

> Nothing you can say or do, no policies twitter puts in place, will ever
> eradicate them. At best it will slow them down. There's always some work
> around and they have lives sad enough to dedicate to finding these work-
> arounds.

First of all, this isn't true: plenty of platforms have "good enough"
moderation that harassment is either eliminated or at least reduced to a
tolerable level. But even if it were true, it would not be a reason for
Twitter not to attempt anything. Again, you're starting from entirely the
wrong premises here.

~~~
iamatworknow
>You keep replying in this thread but you keep making the same error because
you're starting from the axiom that "blocking is bad" and deducing forward
from there. I reject that axiom.

Show me an example of where I said this. What I've been saying is that
attempts to programmatically weed out this type of behavior and the accounts
that people create to perpetuate it will ultimately be ineffective. What's the
difference between 10 people telling you to kill yourself and just 1, because
the other 9 got blocked? Is that not still an unacceptable level of
harassment?

>First of all, this isn't true: plenty of platforms have "good enough"
moderation that harassment is either eliminated or at least reduced to a
tolerable level.

Do you have an example?

~~~
pjc50
Metafilter?

> What's the difference between 10 people telling you to kill yourself and
> just 1, because the other 9 got blocked? Is that not still an unacceptable
> level of harassment?

"We can do something, but it won't be completely effective, so we shouldn't do
anything."

What's the use in vaccination? After all, it doesn't _completely eliminate_
disease. Unless used very consistently for a lifetime.

~~~
iamatworknow
>"We can do something, but it won't be completely effective, so we shouldn't
do anything."

Nice straw man. Again, where did I say that twitter shouldn't do anything?

~~~
nikdaheratik
Well then what _exactly_ are you saying? From what I can see, it's either:
"what Twitter is doing is useless so they should do nothing" or "banning
people is bad because they'll continue to be abusive". Neither of these seems
like a good argument to make.

~~~
iamatworknow
I'm saying a "safe space" on a public (as in anyone can sign up without being
vetted in some way) online service is not possible. Full stop. I never said
twitter shouldn't do anything and I never said banning people is bad. To come
to those conclusions based on my comments shows either a lack of reading
comprehension skills or simply approaching them with your own biased
predisposition that anyone who disagrees with you in some way disagrees with
you in every way (an unfortunate and disgustingly common occurrence these
days).

I'm suggesting to people who use these services that they should tamper their
expectations about what _can_ be done. Twitter will never be a "safe space".
Can it be saf _er_ with some effort on their end? Maybe, but don't ever expect
it to be a platform free from judgement about the beliefs you share, nor will
it ever be free from those who would threaten or harass you for having those
beliefs.

------
donatj
The keyword filtering strikes me as the most filter bubble inducing thing I've
heard in a while.

------
snissn
Just got this today:

Good day there! How are you today? I am a girl who just moved to live in this
city! I have done a search on Twitter to look for man in our area and yeah I
found your Twitter. In case you don't mind we can make friend and chat chit!
Do you have snapchat? Please add me on Snapchat nick: [redacted] so we will
chat and I can show you my personal photos! I don't like to chitchat here:)
It's boring! Lets Snapchat! Sometimes I also use another Snapchat nick:
[redacted] on another cellphone, kindly add this nick too if you did not see
me online on Snapchat nick: [redacted] :) Hope to chat with you really soon.

~~~
cdelsolar
I mean maybe she just found you really appealing.

~~~
snissn
Aw shucks, you think? Thanks :)

------
wildpeaks
I hope they took into account that blind users usually also don't upload
avatars.

~~~
27182818284
It isn't just about blocking those that haven't uploaded avatars. Egg users
stick out because they have other properties such as

New account follows a lot quickly, but doesn't have followers

New account that with time never ever tweets, only retweets and follows

New account that starts and then immediately follows just a single person
ever.

All of those are suspicious

~~~
bussierem
>New account follows a lot quickly, but doesn't have followers

>New account that with time never ever tweets, only retweets and follows

Both of these are also the behavior of people who use Twitter simply as a
content stream. They pretty accurately describe how I use Twitter.

~~~
maxerickson
So no one will see the tweets you already aren't tweeting?

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rconti
Pretty sure my only use case for Twitter is to tweet at non-followers, eg "get
customer service".

------
kobayashi
No mention of how filtering might apply to Twitter's trending algorithms.
Since much of the activities of bots are aimed at pushing a narrative to a
wider audience (getting it trending), it seems like Twitter is currently
neglecting one of the most serious harms that bots pose to the community.

I get that Twitter is focusing on harassment in order to make people feel safe
when using their platform, but I hope the solution will also effect this other
aspect of bot use/account abuse.

------
rafaelm
I see Twitter is getting harder and harder to use anonymously. As someone
living under a totalitarian government that is tightening its grip everyday on
free speech and the internet in general, this worries me.

Trying to signup and use Twitter using Tor is practically impossible.

I understand the spam problem on Twitter is out of control,but I wish there
was a way to use it anonymously.

------
lutusp
Translation: "Wired takes aim at people running ad blockers."

------
monksy
What I don't understand: Why doesn't twitter take moderation seriously? On
reddit it's left up to the moderators of each sub. It does very. But having a
very "up to interpretation" but yet not politically biased set of rules and
enforcement is great.

We don't have a code of conduct or any of the nonsense. Someone violates it
and we catch it, they're gone. (Also that's subjective to time based on how
many times we caught them as well) End of.

~~~
pjc50
I'd love them to take moderation seriously, but it couldn't scale and there's
no natural "partitions" between communities of interest with different norms,
so you can't delegate it to users. They've only just managed to deal with the
most high profile example of "brigading".

------
tomjen3
Dammit. I thought I could now remove any tweet that had the word 'trump' in
it[^2], which meant I could refollow a bunch of people and make twitter much
more useful, but it seems that it only works for notifications in which you
are mentioned[1], which means the feature is pretty pointless, at least for
most people.

[1]:[https://support.twitter.com/articles/20175032](https://support.twitter.com/articles/20175032)
[^2]: this is a complaint I have with almost any social media, even google
plus. I want a persons insight on subject x, I don't want to hear their
political ramblings, no matter what side they are on - politics are poison.

~~~
ceejayoz
A lot of third-party clients implement this properly. Tweetbot's my favorite.

------
nmgsd
A cool way to circumvent the keyword filtering: www.seecret.io

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james_pm
Next they'll want proof that the person in the avatar is actually you.

~~~
vorotato
my avatar is a potato, so that would be difficult. Do I just show a potato?

~~~
notadoc
Maybe you'll have to show Twitter your state ID with the official potato
picture identifying you as a potato.

------
ghettoCoder
Faster please. Anything that accelerates Twitter's demise is ok in my books.
Bonus points if wounds are self-inflicted.

I'm old enough to remember when you only had to deal with the crazies holding
signs and hollering if you went to certain parts of town. If you didn't go
and/or engage the crazies they didn't really exist. Sort of like if a tree
falls but nobody is there...

Now everyone thinks their opinion is valuable and spouts nonsense all over
Twitter. Time to take away the soapbox.

