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(Bloomberg) – It's about a personal story. It is a story that not only attempts to be replaced on Twitter, but also the apparent apathy of society in the face of the problem of false accounts, despite concerns about the "quality of information."
Wednesday afternoon, Jon Russell, of TechCrunch tech news agency, has sent me the link to a Twitter account. Russell wrote about an increase in the number of fake accounts and "robot" centers in Asia. The profile was an exact copy of mine, which begins with a reference to my work – technology columnist: Bloomberg Opinion Asia – and includes other specific details (Ironman athlete, vegetarian, beginner programmer).
A quick Google search He said that they had done the same thing in another account. Both were created in October 2018 and were supposedly residing in Seoul and bearing Korean names. Each had about 1,000 accounts and had about 200 subscribers. At that moment, two things happened to me: I would not have hit myself if it did not affect me; and the search function of Twitter is so deficient that I had to use Google.
I therefore sent a direct message to one of Twitter Inc.'s public relations employees for the Asia-Pacific region. The answer was complete, but I was recommended to use the Twitter complaint tool. I reported each account separately for spoofing and cross-referencing with the other account in both reports. An e-mail with automatic confirmation was immediately sent to me with a file number.
The first response came 17 minutes later:
We investigated the reported account and determined that it did not violate Twitter's spoofing policy. [19659007] How strange it is, I thought. The account, although it did not use my name, not only copied very specific details, but also gave false information about the account holder's work and employer. I replied (to whom, I do not know), expressing my dissatisfaction and saying that I would make the case worse if necessary. I was always in touch with the public relations department and I gave the case numbers to the staff.
Shortly thereafter, I received the following reply:
Thank you for informing us of this case. In response to your complaint, we contacted the user to ask him to correct his account.
I do not know if it is the intervention of the public relations department that resulted in the examination of the case or the person who responded to my complaint. But I will point out that my brief response to the case has received another automatic answer: "He tried to update a case that is closed".
The next morning, an account changed profile, revealing what I suspected earlier: that it was a center of followers. . Now he said: 500 retweets = 500 followers! Put me as LIKE AND RETUIT if you start following us! Enable my notifications on Follow me #follow #instafollow #instantfollowback.
The other account remained unchanged. My imitator online continued. But even the change on the first account was not enough. An account created clearly to deceive must not have a second chance, it must be blocked.
In his February letter to shareholders, Twitter's leader, Jack Dorsey, introduced the phrase "quality of information". efforts to "fight against all the malicious activities of the service, including spam, malicious automations and false accounts".
I understand that this warning must not be considered as a closure of accounts that parody, pay tribute or criticize. However, society can not in any case see these two examples and conclude to another intention than to cheat.
It is likely that human beings on the other end of complaints like mine are overwhelmed and make mistakes in judgment. However, Twitter's policies and execution reveal the truth: at the institutional level, Twitter really does not seem to care about fake accounts.
If the company were concerned, the two accounts would have been found to be misleading. The staff would have found that most of the reports and followers I mentioned were wrong (I notice that many have referred to bitcoins or cryptocurrencies in their profiles).
And, without a doubt, Twitter would have closed the accounts having made verifiable misrepresentations regarding their work and their employer, especially after they were handed over to the company's executives.
I presented the case to another Twitter spokesperson, who did not want to be identified by his name. and stated that the company did not "disclose information about Twitter accounts for privacy and security reasons." He did not make any more specific comments. In my opinion, not being named is part of the problem. If Dorsey and his team are concerned about the integrity of the platform they have built, they need to put in place adequate systems to protect users.
On Thursday, when Twitter released the third quarter results, Dorsey wrote in its quarterly shareholder letter that operating expenses would continue to rise as it seeks to reduce the number of spam and junk content accounts. adding staff. However, the problem lies partly in the fact that it does not have the same resources as Facebook Inc. Twitter recorded a third quarter adjusted net profit of only 106 million USD, an improvement over the previous year, but a rounding error in the context of what was expected of Facebook for US $ 5.6 billion in profits over the same period.
When it comes to examining the content, there are few effective substitutes for the human eye. In the 12 months ending June, Facebook added nearly 50% more staff, which increased efforts to counter the increase in false accounts and misleading or false information. Twitter can not do it so easily, so it needs to rely more on artificial intelligence. This technology is certainly improving, but there is still a lot to be done.
Of course, Twitter needs data, users and a commitment. Most importantly, you need to be careful that users can trust your service.
This article does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or that of Bloomberg LP and its owners.
Original Note: My imitator Twitter does not care about robots: Tim Culpan
Author of the original story: Tim Culpan in Taipei, [email protected]
Editor responsible for the original story: Paul Sillitoe, [email protected] [19659027] For more articles like this, go to bloomberg.com
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