I Data

There's a very real benefit to having a lot of followers. The user withdavidle posted this above, which is a great article: https://medium.com/i-data/fake-friends-with-real-benefits-eec8c4693bd3

Looks boring, won't click Fun fact: https://medium.com/i-data/29-reasons-youre-reading-this-article-fbf467… "29 reasons you’re reading this article or why odd-length BuzzFeed listicles perform better than even ones"

Here's a medium post last year about buying bots for those interested: https://medium.com/i-data/fake-friends-with-real-benefits-eec8c4693bd3 Thanks for making the data set available.

Suspicions were aroused after researchers found a third of the accounts under investigation to have been created within minutes of each other. They exclusively promoted UK-based PRC diplomats, ignoring those in other countries. So human researchers were able to spot a pretty obvious pattern. How come Twitter's own staff and algorithms never seem to catch on, despite having even more data to look at? It amazes me that Twitter fails at something so basic -- identifying and shutting down bot networks -- and has been failing at it for so long. Here's a report from 2017 (https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-38724082). Another one from 2014 (https://medium.com/i-data/fake-friends-with-real-benefits-eec8c4693bd3… If you look through the archives you will find similar reports going back 15 years. Someone on HN (can't find the ref) once speculated that Twitter has an incentive not to shut down the fake accounts because the fakes boosts user numbers and "engagement" which correlate with profit. Twitter is certainly making a lot: I once looked into running a Twitter ad campaign for my business until I saw projected $2+ clicks. Are the massive margins suggested by those CPCs built on the backs of fake accounts?