News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources by Abishek_Muthian on Monday April 25, 2022 @11:11AM (#31155972)
> If elon removes bots

I haven't received a good answer yet for how Elon would solve the bot problem.

It's as if misinformation/disinformation/harassment are propagated only by bots and not real people, So would these people be blocked along with the bots? Would censorship be fine here then?

Social media firms have turned a blind eye towards bots/click farms because it has helped them to exaggerate their engagement figures to the advertisers, Just like any other online-advertising firm.

Then again, Elon seems to have expressed some views against advertisements on Twitter.

Re:Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources by jen20 on Monday April 25, 2022 @11:25AM (#31156188)
You are letting perfect be the enemy of the good here.

There are millions upon millions of bot accounts, trivially identifiable as “word647829585729” with a profile that reads “Soccer mom. Ohio. Loves baseball. Hates cheese.” or similar.

Every single one of those could be removed and the problem would be improved even if not eliminated. Pick the low-hanging fruit first…

That said I don’t imagine Elon Musk has any intention of doing that, and don’t intend to stick around on Twitter to find out.

Re:Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources by notahacker on Monday April 25, 2022 @12:17PM (#31156970)
There are also millions of people with low effort accounts that mostly just retweet stuff, often precisely the bot-amplified political topics that show up in their feed. Those people are going to whine just as loudly about censorship as the people kicked off because someone reported them.

It's not like bot operators can't change handles or like the flags which would really catch them "engages on $politicalwedgeissue and amplifies "$particularpoliticalcause" are uncontroversial

Re:Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources by pmyteh on Monday April 25, 2022 @01:25PM (#31158010)
It's not at all trivial, and there's a surprising amount of academic research on whether it's even possible.

Take the most extreme case: a bunch of new accounts with long-numbered names posting identical political messages. It turns out that many of these have (unique!) real people behind them. They're not bots, they're coordinated people who are part of a campaign that's either grassroots (sign up and make ourselves heard!) or AstroTurf (I've been paid by a PR company to...). Are these excluded as bots? After all, a lot of PR accounts are paid to post.

Many other 'bot' accounts have scheduled high-volume posting, but are directly operated by a single human; they may be spammers, but they aren't anything other than who they claim to be.

What about political clubs brigading? If I get my mates to set up alts and frequently shitpost about politicians we dislike, is that a bot army, or privacy-friendly political activism?

In the end, you just have to take a view and decide what you're prepared to accept.

Re:Twitter set to accept Musk's $43B offer – sources by evan_ on Monday April 25, 2022 @02:39PM (#31158933)
you do realize that "word2048962062" is the format of username suggested to you when you signup, right?