SwiftOnSecurity

I have a sample size of 246k accounts that are surprisingly free of obvious bots. I once even paid for a bot follower audit. When I go to an account, I can see if any of my followers follow them. It’s a very very good signal to determine legitimacy of another account.

My biggest pet-peeve is sockpuppet bots. A human cycles through hundreds or thousands of accounts posting human-generated comments. But most of the time, the bot is just retweeting others from a central list of tweets to get stories to critical mass, and appear follow-worthy.

Any person or bot that would follow one of these trollfarm semi-automated bots that retweet new crap 24/7, are the kind of cultists and deranged people that make the internet suck. Blocking them is a very good idea. Additionally, it prevents them replying to you with bait posts.

Inevitably, on popular posts and discussions, you see some MagaDirtbike2020 account interjecting with baity concern-troll posts. Those are not real people. Stop replying. It feels so good to dunk. But it’s a ploy to get more alt-facts followers who see you debating them. Block.

The point is agitation, appearing to come from far Left and Right. They “debate” in a style that is dishonest, endlessly drawn-out, and distinctive. There are entire farms of these accounts. Not just foreign governments do this. There’s freaking cabals that run these operations.

There is a certain way that bot account biographies are written, and the types of images they steal for avatars. You run out of ideas very fast writing other people’s biographies. Trying to appear real. You start having to try very hard. And it shows. I just can’t _describe_ it.

It’s funny, one of the biggest weaknesses of bots posing as human are the people who deplete all their humanity building them.

Now that Twitter prioritizes showing the replies of the original author of a thread, and your friend circle, baiting people into replying to your troll is HYPER-EFFECTIVE for visibility. It’s supercharged trolling. Getting dunked on by 40 other people in the replies IS THEIR GOAL

Systemsthatprioritizeinteractionredefinewhatsuccessfulinteractionlookslike.

Trying to accomplish shame-based behavior policing, against people with no identity, on a platform that only counts in one direction, does not work. It would be like threatening a gravity well with meteor bombardment.

“Your tidal forces are tearing my silicate mantle apart, Lisa!”

In this thread @moorehn notices how bot accounts are temporarily inhabited to trawl women’s mentions on Twitter, to easily gain intense “interaction” with a wide range of accounts, and game spam filters. https://twitter.com/moorehn/status/1076922218477690881 …

A counter-intuitive strategy is if you see someone being brigaded, at your discretion based on situation, is send them a supportful note instead of engaging directly. Trying to checkmate people flooding other users’ mentions has its place, but sometimes it exacerbates gaming.

Sometimes I break my rules (and inevitably instantly regret it) but found using my platform to try to win arguments with totally fake shitposters makes me the tool. It’s super un-rewarding once you see what they’re playing, and they want you to join in. You’re part of the plan.

That social networking appears to be a familiar human experience is extremely alluring and complacency-inducing, that’s the point, but rubber-meets-road mechanics of its systems are actually extremely divergent from anything we have a firm cultural grasp on the consequences of.

Look at the first people who retweeted that. How did they find it? Are they fake accounts too used to boost new bait tweets? Did the original booster account retweet then drop off once it got traction? You are all cogs in a machine you can’t even see the operation of.

Ultimately, a large portion of Facebook and Twitter’s userbase are casual normies who follow bot accounts that retweet other bot accounts with stolen content and ideas. They have no incentive to just remove these fake accounts. People want trash. They don’t care what it enables.

Real people or groups who spend all day making social media identities sell access to their account, used to promote things without fingerprints. They’re too perfect and too clean. Their viral tweets are generic, but unique and reworded. Their feed is full of self-help maxims.

Another aspect of bots: Many of them are hacked accounts kept dormant for years until needed. Then they rename/rebrand if needed, and start bombarding the conversation.https://twitter.com/samthielman/status/1083916505107042305 …