Fake Activity, Often Bought for Publicity Purposes, Influences Trending Topics
Nov. 24, 2013 6:25 p.m. ET
Bruno Mallart
One day earlier this month,
Jim Vidmar
bought 1,000 fake Twitter accounts for $58 from an online vendor in Pakistan.
He
then programmed the accounts to "follow" the Twitter account of rapper
Dave Murrell,
who calls himself Fyrare and pays Mr. Vidmar to boost his
standing on the social network. Mr. Vidmar's fake accounts also
rebroadcast Mr. Murrell's tweets, amplifying his Twitter voice.
Fake accounts are thriving on Twitter and are used to
make celebrities and trending topics appear more popular than they are.
There is also a robust black market for buying such accounts, Jeff Elder
reports. Photo: twitter.com/Fyrare.
Mr. Murrell says he sometimes buys
Twitter ads to raise his profile, "but you'll get more with Jim." He
says many Twitter users try to make their followings look bigger than
they are. "If you're not padding your numbers, you're not doing it
right," he says. "It's part of the game."
Mr.
Vidmar offers a window into the shadowy world of false accounts and
computerized robots on Twitter, one of the world's largest social
networks. Surrounded by a dozen computers at his home overlooking a golf
course near the Las Vegas Strip, Mr. Vidmar has been buying fake
accounts and unleashing them on Twitter for six years.
Today,
he says he manages 10,000 robots for roughly 50 clients, who pay Mr.
Vidmar to make them appear more popular and influential.
His are among millions of fake
accounts on Twitter. Mr. Vidmar and other owners manage them to simulate
Twitter users: they tweet; retweet, or forward, other tweets; send and
reply to messages; and follow and unfollow other Twitter accounts, among
other actions.
Some entertainers pay
for fake followers. But false accounts can be political tools as well.
In 2011, thousands of fake accounts disrupted anti-Kremlin protesters on
Twitter.
The fake accounts remain a
cloud over Twitter Inc. in the wake of its successful initial public
offering. "Twitter is where many people get news," says
Sherry Turkle,
director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self. "If what
is trending on Twitter is being faked by robots, people need to know
that. This will and should undermine trust."
Fake accounts thrive on Twitter in part because, unlike
Facebook,
FB -3.05%
Twitter doesn't limit users to a single account, or require them to use their real names.
Twitter's
terms of service prohibit "mass account creation," and the buying or
selling of accounts or followers. Last spring, Twitter helped a research
team apply a filter that, for a time, blocked 95% of new fake accounts.
A Twitter spokesman wouldn't disclose
whether the company has continued to use the researchers' technique to
identify and block suspect accounts.
While
conceding that fakes are "a difficult problem, the Twitter spokesman
said, "We have a variety of automated and manual controls in place to
detect, flag, and suspend accounts created solely for spam purposes."
On Friday the company posted a job opening ad on its site for an anti-spam product manager position.
Mr.
Vidmar says Facebook has suspended his accounts and threatened legal
action for pursuing similar activities on that network. Twitter hasn't
contacted or reprimanded him, he says, though it has suspended or
deleted several personal accounts he has used to pitch his business.
In
securities filings, Twitter says it believes fake accounts represent
fewer than 5% of its 230 million active users. Independent researchers
believe the number is higher.
Italian
security researchers
Andrea Stroppa
and
Carlo De Micheli
say they found 20 million fake accounts for sale on Twitter this
summer. That would amount to nearly 9% of Twitter's monthly active
users. The Italian researchers also found software for sale that allows
spammers to create unlimited fake accounts. The researchers decoded
robot-programming software to reveal how easy it is for spammers to
control the convincing fakes.
Twitter declined to discuss specific findings.
Jason Ding,
a researcher at Barracuda Labs who has studied fake Twitter
followers for more than a year, also thinks Twitter underestimates the
prevalence of fake accounts on the network. Mr. Ding says users don't
understand how active and realistic the fakes can appear.
For
10 months in 2012 and 2013, a team of researchers from the University
of California Berkeley and George Mason University worked with Twitter's
security department to help identify fake accounts and minimize robot
activity.
The team bought fake accounts
on the black market, identified common characteristics, and developed a
filter that would block roughly 95% of such accounts. Twitter's previous
system caught about 8% of fake accounts, the researchers said. They
presented the results at an academic conference.
In
April, Twitter and the researchers applied the filter. Mr. Vidmar says
he remembers the day, because most of his fake accounts were deleted,
and he couldn't create new ones. "They cleaned house," he says.
But
Mr. Vidmar and others say the underground market quickly adapted. The
researchers' system flagged accounts with incomplete profiles, no
pictures, and little activity. In response, Mr. Vidmar says suppliers
now fill out more account details, add pictures, and tweet from the
accounts before selling them.
That drove up the cost of fake accounts. But marketers and researchers say the black market is again thriving.
Just
two weeks after the crackdown, Twitter caught only about half the
suspicious accounts being offered by merchants previously identified as
selling fake accounts, according to the Berkeley researchers.
Mr.
Vidmar says one of his suppliers is offering 150,000 fake accounts for
sale. "I could go buy fake accounts from about 20 different sources
right now," he says.
Mr. Ding, the
Barracuda Labs researcher, says the fake-account market is "going very
strong." He and other researchers say Twitter doesn't appear to be
applying the Berkeley researchers' techniques to root out other fake
accounts.
Mr. Vidmar's robots have
helped make his clients "trending topics" on Twitter, giving them
special mention on Twitter users' home pages. The trending topics appear
just below the "promoted trend" that the company sells for as much as
$200,000 a day. The trending topics aren't marked as "sponsored," so
they appear more genuine.
Rapper
Tony Benson
says hiring Mr. Vidmar to promote his account on Twitter is "the
best decision I ever made." Mr. Vidmar's robots made the rapper, known
as Philly Chase, a trending topic so often around Philadelphia that he
attracted attention from local newspapers. Prominence on Twitter led to
gigs, fans and ways to promote his videos, Mr. Benson says.
Mr.
Vidmar uses software to follow tens of thousands of accounts for his
clients, another tactic Twitter prohibits. Being followed prompts many
Twitter users to return the favor, and follow his clients.
In
September, Mr. Vidmar used software to follow more than 100,000 Twitter
users in a week for the Australian rock band The Contagious; that
boosted the band's following by 20,000.
The band has a "verified" account, meaning it has taken extra steps to prove to Twitter that the account is real.
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