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An algorithm developed at Carnegie Mellon University makes it easier to determine if someone has faked an Amazon or Yelp review or if a politician with a suspiciously large number of Twitter followers might have bought and paid for that popularity.
The method, called FRAUDAR, marks the latest escalation in the cat-and-mouse game played by online fraudsters and the social media platforms that try to out them. In particular, the new algorithm makes it possible to see through camouflage that fraudsters use to make themselves look legitimate, said Christos Faloutsos, professor of machine learning and computer science.
In real-world experiments using Twitter data for 41.7 million users and 1.47 billion followers, FRAUDAR fingered more than 4,000 accounts not previously identified as fraudulent, including many that used known follower-buying services such as TweepMe and TweeterGetter.
Bad news for the nascent astroturfing industry.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by julian on Friday September 09 2016, @04:08PM
I see this on Twitter all the time. Once a week I get followed (someone subscribes to my Twitter feed) by an account that's obviously purely commercial, but not necessarily fraudulent. It's usually some C or D list author OR PR/marketing/MBA parasite. Their profile picture is professional and their background image is their newest book or whatever. They post a lot of content but none interacts with other people. It's all self-promotion and links to their own stuff. They have an absurd number of followers and usually follow an equally absurdly high number of accounts, often over 100,000 for each. If you've ever used Twitter you know following that many people makes it basically unusable. It moves too fast, there's too much to deal with.
These accounts aren't really interacting with anyone, that's another give away. And no one is interacting with them. You'd think if you had 100k people interested in you or your work that some would occasionally talk to you. Their followers are all fakes. The account follows real people to try to drum up publicity (following someone sends them a notification so it's like a spam message).
People complain about Twitter trolls but these are the real scourge killing the platform. As always marketdroids ruin everything
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 09 2016, @08:23PM
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(Score: 3, Funny) by khallow on Friday September 09 2016, @09:27PM
I'll own the known universe inside of ten years. Love me.