It’s terrifying how cheap and easy it is to masquerade as hundreds of thousands to millions of people on social media using automation, and how little social media companies are doing to stop it.
Regardless of the numbers, the stress it’s placing on discourse is devastating, and there seem to be few serious, market-driven solutions to this problem.
The growth-at-all-costs mentality has put companies like Twitter in a position where they must choose between profits and responsible community development and moderation. It’s clear which path they’ve chosen.
It's also terrifying that headlines and articles can be taken as valid. Smear articles and misleading information are troubling as well in the upcoming years.
An anonymous account is not the same thing as a bot. As acrimonious as the current state of politics is, I wouldn't blame anyone for using a pseudonym online to voice their opinion.
Touche. But you'll have to pardon me for being distrustful of anyone that walks in just to defend a politician of any kind (without hard proof, anyway).
This is understandable, but nonetheless HN guidelines ask that you suspend that distrust. Every legit account starts with a first comment, and it's natural that a person's first comment would be on a topic they feel strongly about.
You can check my comment history to verify my identity if you want someone that is defending Yang. I'm actually being vocal in this thread about Yang Gangers specifically making accounts to participate in conversations about him.
is it? don’t all twitter accounts require phone number validation? can’t twitter set a limit to 5-10 accounts per phone number? isn’t there all kind of rate limiting + captchas to creating/liking tweets?
Regardless of the numbers, the stress it’s placing on discourse is devastating, and there seem to be few serious, market-driven solutions to this problem.
The growth-at-all-costs mentality has put companies like Twitter in a position where they must choose between profits and responsible community development and moderation. It’s clear which path they’ve chosen.