Battling Fake Accounts, Twitter to Slash Millions of Followers

[Cattledog]

Source: NYT

By Nicholas Confessore and Gabriel J.X. Dance
July 11, 2018

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Twitter will begin removing tens of millions of suspicious accounts from users’ followers on Thursday, signaling a major new effort to restore trust on the popular but embattled platform.

The reform takes aim at a pervasive form of social media fraud. Many users have inflated their followers on Twitter or other services with automated or fake accounts, buying the appearance of social influence to bolster their political activism, business endeavors or entertainment careers.

Twitter’s decision will have an immediate impact: Beginning on Thursday, many users, including those who have bought fake followers and any others who are followed by suspicious accounts, will see their follower numbers fall. While Twitter declined to provide an exact number of affected users, the company said it would strip tens of millions of questionable accounts from users’ followers. The move would reduce the total combined follower count on Twitter by about 6 percent — a substantial drop.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/11/technology/twitter-fake-followers.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

[sandensea]

1. And not only here in the U.S., but in other countries where RW despots have been funding trolls

Good for you, Twitter.

[dweller]

2. would funny and fitting if

it leaves Hair Twitler with 6 followers ...

[cp]

3. Good for Twitter!

Thank you.

[rtracey]

4. about f'n time

I am glad to hear it...they also need to figure out a way to check these things upon registering....perhaps more to the sign up process besides name and email

[hlthe2b]

5. So who will be left to follow Twittler?

[FSogol]

6. Damn, I hope my one follower doesn't disappear!

Some deplorables are already complaining:

So overnight all 8,000 people I was following are gone and 500 of my followers gone as well. What’s the point of Twitter again?

[FakeNoose]

7. They need to revamp their whole format

If somebody wants to be a "follower" they should be charged for it. If they don't pay, they're not a follower. I'm not talking about a lot of money, just something to keep the trolls out. Once Twitter has passed that hurdle, the quality of the threads will be immensely improved.

IMHO Just sayin'

[Scoopster]

8. Totally meaningless move by Twitter

Note that this is NOT banning or even suspending the accounts of the bots. This is merely hiding the fact that they exist. It does NOTHING at all to stop:

- Propaganda
- Falsified news reports
- Unconfirmed news reports
- Conspiracy theories
- Harassment, trolling & instigation
- Threats of violence & civil war

You can't fix the damn problem by hiding it under the damn rug.

[marble falls]

17. All depends if one confuses free speech with protected speech or not.

[Initech]

10. Wonder how many followers @realDonaldTrump will lose?

[TeamPooka]

11. I wonder how many followers Trump loses. I've heard he has a large % that are fake accounts

[brooklynite]

12. Awww.....

I have some lovely (and very polite) Russian bot followers.

[LiberalArkie]

13. Maybe they will do something about those fake ones who

constantly praise and worship our wonderful, kind and benevolent leader humungous the great.

[catbyte]

14. It's about time, but I hope they have a better system than they've had. I've been flagged as a

bot at least 6 times in the past 2 months. It's annoying as hell. I'm not sure what I'm doing to trigger the suspicion, but it is a pain in the neck.

[Javaman]

15. prepare for the predictable fit from the orange asshole

as he declares this "fake" fake news

[elmac]

16. I was watching the NATO tweets this morning

and a bunch were obviously putin accounts, and were spreading anti NATO propaganda.

[Bigredhunk]

18. -

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/12/technology/twitter-followers-nyt.html

President Trump, who has used Twitter as a way to speak directly to both loyal voters and critics, lost about 340,000 followers in the Twitter purge, knocked down to 53 million from 53.4 millon on Wednesday. His predecessor, President Barack Obama, took a much bigger hit, losing three million followers in about one day. (He started with many more, dropping to 101 million on Thursday from 104 million the day before.)

I don't buy that it only had 340,000 fakes.

[BlueIdaho]

19. Fix it or face extinction.

Why bother going to a social media site where you are served up on a silver platter to foreign propaganda operations hell bent on the destruction of our way of life?

I flushed my Twitter account years ago. If they can get their shit together I may re-evaluate. But seriously, why waste my eyes feeding the trolls?

[Mosby]

20. I dont see the appeal of twitter