Twitter Updates Developer Rules in the Wake of Bot Crackdown (mashable.com) 67
Twitter is getting serious about its bot problem. From a report: Hours after a massive bot purge that prompted the #TwitterLockOut hashtag to trend, the company is announcing new rules for developers meant to prevent bots from using third-party apps to spread spam. According to the new rules, developers that use Twitter's API will no longer be able to let users: Simultaneously post identical or substantially similar content to multiple accounts. Simultaneously perform actions such as Likes, Retweets, or follows from multiple accounts Use of any form of automation (including scheduling) to post identical or substantially similar content, or to perform actions such as Likes or Retweets, across many accounts that have authorized your app (whether or not you created or directly control those accounts) is not permitted.
Let the whining begin! (Score:1)
Cue the alt-right cries of censorship...
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Cue the alt-right cries of censorship...
Cue the droning on of $FAVORED_PARTY saying $UNFAVORED_PARTY crying about $PERCEIVED_SLIGHT.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
But they totally have a right to express their customer dissatisfaction! If they're not appeased they might just stop paying for... umm, posting to reach the audience of... um, organizing on...
Godd*mn network effects of free services.
They'll build their own service, with blackjack and hookers! Like Gab... Gab is totally succeeding at grabbing desirable market
Mass exodus (Score:2)
Cue the alt-right cries of censorship...
Cue the droning on of $FAVORED_PARTY saying $UNFAVORED_PARTY crying about $PERCEIVED_SLIGHT.
All I know is Gab.ai [slashdot.org] got a massive bundle of new users in the last day or so.
Does that sound like something bots would do?
I think Twitter has reached the "we don't care about users" stage.
Next up will be the "We see some problems on the horizon" phase, followed by the "we've changed our direction" phase, then the "please come back - we're sorry" phase, then a couple of "we've reorganized and eliminated 10% of our employees" phases.
After that, maybe a year or two from now, we will look back on twitter with t
Re: (Score:1)
It was hilarious how they were all like "OH NOES THEY'RE PURGING CONSERVATIVES!!1!"* but it was because a good fraction of all the centipedes on Twitter were Russian bots XD
*Funny how those on the far-right routinely call everyone from moderate Republicans to actual nazis "conservatives" and don't seem to get any pushback on using that broad brush.
Re: Let the whining begin! (Score:1)
It was especially funny because they were clearly too dumb or egotistical to realize that's why half their "followers" disappeared. I assume those who did realize, or had organized their own bots, just kept quiet.
Re: (Score:1)
I waa skeptical at first about the russian thing, but watching one particularly dubious account I noticeed it acciidently posted its 'ra ra americana trump is the best' thing as coming from Moscow on the twitter geolocation thing. Big old HMMMMM from me on that one.
So yeah, theres definately something fishy going on with these bots and troll accounts.
Re: (Score:2)
So yeah, theres definately something fishy going on with these bots and troll accounts.
If a bunch of Twitter accounts can actually influence an election, then banning bots isn't going to help much.
I'm sure for the cost of busing their constituencies around to multiple polling places, the Dems could pay for quite a few human tweets.
If not they should hire some Russians, amazing marketers and so cost effective!
Re: (Score:2)
The problem with alt-right/left/ extremists of any flavour is these people live in a bubble, they only look at what seems to confirm their preconceptions.
So they'd never start to follow what they see as 'the enemy'.
Re: (Score:2)
Probably also true: if a bunch of Twitter accounts can actually influence an election, then not banning bots means nothing else you might do will help much, at all.
Low chance of success by doing v. zero chance of success by not doing.
When it comes to defending democracy, I'll take epsilon over zero every day of the week and twice on Tuesday.
Re: (Score:2)
When it comes to defending democracy, I'll take epsilon over zero every day of the week and twice on Tuesday.
This is exactly what it comes down to. You have to do *something*
Re: (Score:1)
I make a LOT of money exploiting their ignorance
0.02 shekels have been deposited to your account.
I help fund national antifa chapters with money the alt-right generates for me.
Good for you, now that the funding has ended https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Don't forget, more non-sense next time.
Re: (Score:1)
PUBLIC AREA
USED NEARLY UBIQUITOUSLY
ITS CENSORSHIP
That you would try to argue otherwise does not speak well of your intelligence or humanity.
For some reason you feel the need to side with a clearly malicious institution in our society.
For some reason you devote your energy to furthering these malicious interests instead of resisting them.
Whatever this reason is does not matter. You have no place in this society and you will soon be driven out.
Re: (Score:3)
How are they going to determine similar content?
Any tweet with the phrase "no collusion" is going to be tossed out.
Re: (Score:2)
Just look at the accounts using this hashtag. They have have something in common.
Re: (Score:1)
No they want to get rid of the echo chamber that makes extreme views look like it's coming from mainstream when really it's very few people and a whole bunch of bots.
And what is an "extreme" view? Oh right, the ones that disagree with AmiMojo.
And what is an echo chamber? Oh right, only those who perpetuate things AmiMojo disagrees with. When people perpetuate things AmiMojo agrees with, well that can't be an echo chamber. Not one to worry about at least.
To borrow from Bill Maher:
Someone saying "men are better than women" - Boo! deplorable sexist scum!
Someone saying "women are better than men" - cheers from the crowd! Go girl power!
More like:
Someone says Bill Maher should get the death penalty for smoking marijuana. There's loud cheers! - The majority of the crowd looks around with a confused look and see's one person in the corner with a bunch of amplifiers.
Re: (Score:2)
Never thought there were any humans on Twitter (Score:3)
I thought that was the whole point of Twitter: bots posting to other bot's feeds. During my brief time in marketing, that was my general experience anyway: we'd package up some piece of clickbait, link it to an article we planted on Slashdot or similar forum, and then drop it into a bot hopper somewhere to bounce around an extended bot ecosystem, in the hopes that the occasional tweet/link would eventually get posted to a notable news source and increase our SEO midichlorians. As for anyone actually READING Twitter? That's something that only happened when we needed to retune existing bots or build new ones. Long story short, as a human, "I ain't got time for no Twitter!"
Cut the crap (Score:1)
Just turn off API access to Twitter.
Re: (Score:2)
Without API access, bots will screen-scrape.
What developers? (Score:4, Insightful)
It seems like they could have just called and let the handful of people with grandfathered unlimited Twitter API access know this.
Everyone else gets limited Oath keys so they can't support many Twitter users at once anyway, which would seem to limit bot use...
I really doubt bots are coming in through the API, they are coming in via the website by bots pretending to be a browser.
Re: (Score:2)
I suspect presenting captchas in a pseudo-random distribution where, say, 20% of tweets get hit at any given time would do a lot to shut down non human usage. The more a party tweets, the more likely he, she, or it is to see a captcha.
Expect disability advocates to sue (Score:2)
If a website operator deliberately makes a public website inaccessible to users with disabilities [w3.org], it risks a lawsuit from National Federation of the Blind [wikipedia.org] or foreign counterparts.
Re: (Score:2)
There must be support in the law to support mechanisms such as captcha, because I often see them when using Google Search and other websites. Its either this or there is little risk to the operator of legal action.
Re: (Score:2)
I see a lot of people second-guessing their mediation. When I fix problems in my systems or on my network, I don't roll out solutions that don't stop the problem...
Re: (Score:1)
amazing work detective, stating the completely obvious and taking mod points from the free speech discussion
WGAF? (Score:1)
Seriously.
mnem
Pants are highly overrated.
Because of Pressure or Integrity? (Score:3)
Unless there's a piece of software that can automate the screaming of one particular statement in timed intervals to circumvent these new rules, of course.
Re: (Score:1)
privately owned public spaces
could you elaborate on that fam?
Re: (Score:1)
Not just a bot purge (Score:1)
My understanding is that it was not just a bot purge, it was also an ideological purge to a non-trivial degree. Anecdotally, a number of conservative users were locked out, some with no recourse and others allowed back in if they provided additional identifying details like a phone number.
It defies logic to believe the company's reaction to events in the political sphere could in any way be apolitical.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
More likely, Twitter is a company that survives on advertising revenue. Bots don't click ads. Bots that do nothing but amplify the perceived size of an audience and add garbage to the platform as a whole are not profitable. The vast majority of bots right now are doing this amplification in the name of a particular ideology, due to a certain world state deciding it was the best way to fuck with an
Re: (Score:1)
Your statements might persuade me if Twitter operated like other normal businesses. I'm skeptical they even are a business. Twitter has enough cash reserves to lose money for centuries [cnbc.com]. So do you have any other evidence to disprove my hypothesis? Unfortunately, lacking some kind of third party polling of current and ex Twitter users, I suspect all arguments will be based in anecdote for the foreseeable future.
Try it on for size, though; imagine the people running Twitter do have ulterior motives. If you