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A comment on Analysis of 200M tweets discussing coronavirus suggests 45%-60% come from bots. Parent comment

Re:Analysis of 200M tweets discussing coronavirus suggests 4... by programmarchy on Saturday May 30, 2020 @10:33AM (#23361455)
Maybe they don't need to ban accounts, but instead put up a "bot check", sort of like their new editorial process? Something along the lines of "This account has been identified as likely being a bot. Read more." To remedy a false positive, the human could provide Twitter with a an official ID to remove the warning.
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Re:Analysis of 200M tweets discussing coronavirus suggests 4... by gruez on Saturday May 30, 2020 @10:41AM (#23361506)
Then you get hate from the hn crowd about how they're violating everyone's privacy by deanonymizing them
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Re:Analysis of 200M tweets discussing coronavirus suggests 4... by leereeves on Saturday May 30, 2020 @10:56AM (#23361617)
Worse, Twitter can't be trusted to keep the IDs safe. They've suffered many data breaches in the past.

And it wouldn't even stop the bots, because Twitter isn't limited to Americans, so bot makers could easily send fake official IDs from someplace Twitter can't check. Or send stolen offical IDs from other data breaches.

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Re:Analysis of 200M tweets discussing coronavirus suggests 4... by joering2 on Saturday May 30, 2020 @11:26AM (#23361787)
I bet there are some ThisIDDoesNotExist websites that bots use to autogenerate vast majority of fake ids, probably by using ThisPersonDoesNotExist website.

You can generate realistc photos of IDs from countries that Twitter cannot positively verify those bc in USA there are ways to check authentity of your document. But IDs from Russia or Ukraine - no way.

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Re:Analysis of 200M tweets discussing coronavirus suggests 4... by quantummkv on Saturday May 30, 2020 @10:48AM (#23361565)
> To remedy a false positive, the human could provide Twitter with a an official ID to remove the warning.

That would work only against casual bots. The big nation-sponsored botnets won't have issues with providing genuine government issued identities for bots. Which kind of defeats the whole purpose and wastes a lot of resources twitter would like to use elsewhere.

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Re:Analysis of 200M tweets discussing coronavirus suggests 4... by dependenttypes on Saturday May 30, 2020 @11:28AM (#23361801)
They already do that. Fun fact, I was never able to make and use a twitter account even after verifying it with my phone and email. Apparently I was a bot from the start, before even posting anything.
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