Nearly 20% of active Twitter accounts likely to be fake or spam

Re:Nearly 20% of active Twitter accounts likely to be fake o... by ramblerman on Monday May 16, 2022 @10:22AM (#31397679)

They define active as having tweeted in the last 90 days.

I'm active on twitter, check it every other day, follow @ElonMusk but I don't tweet. Perhaps I'm a unique case, or their assumptions are a bit off.

Some metrics they consider suspicious (from the article):

1) Accounts that didn't tweet recently

2) Accounts with low number of tweets

3) Accounts with a low number of followers

4) Accounts that didn't set up their own profile image

Lurking != bot, and these data-points would all hit high for lurkers. I'm somewhat suspicious of their results, especially given the results from this pew study suggesting the majority of twitter users don't tweet very much.

25% of Twitter Users Produce 97% of All Tweets: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2021/11/15/2-comparing-...

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Re:Nearly 20% of active Twitter accounts likely to be fake o... by phpisthebest on Monday May 16, 2022 @10:23AM (#31397715)

I am the same, in fact my account has never posted a thing ever, never liked at thing ever, I just follow people I want to see updates from that is all.

I treat it like RSS not Social Media

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Re:Nearly 20% of active Twitter accounts likely to be fake o... by phpisatrash on Monday May 16, 2022 @10:47AM (#31398190)

Look my username

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Re:Nearly 20% of active Twitter accounts likely to be fake o... by jacquesm on Monday May 16, 2022 @10:23AM (#31397725)

With Twitters' changes to ask people to log in to see most content the number of lurkers probably shot up.

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Re:Nearly 20% of active Twitter accounts likely to be fake o... by loceng on Monday May 16, 2022 @10:25AM (#31397762)

I'm now wondering what % of overall tweets are from that 1/5th of bots.

If it's 1-1 then 20% of tweets being from bots isn't great - but it could even be more than that.

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Re:Nearly 20% of active Twitter accounts likely to be fake o... by _joel on Monday May 16, 2022 @11:02AM (#31398435)

Same here I never tweet but follow a few people.

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