The ongoing Elon Twitter saga: "insert demographic" melts down

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Hopefully the bickering will end and either Bill Gates or Gary Lineker will be along to buy out Musk (the only two suggestions as to who the 363 respondents to this thread, and over the duration of fifteen thousand plus posts typed out would like to actually have running X) <LOL>

Meanwhile the President of the USA becomes more deranged by the day and put up the sort of display in Israel that could only reconfirm the poor old chap's worsening senility.
 
Werewolf said:
"not a bot" LOL

And the idea that bot farms that are spending tens of thousands just to get the hardware up and running to sell their services won't be more than willing and able to pay $1 a year to get a "Certified not a bot by Musk's genius" account is absolutely laughable.

All it does is make hiring a bot net fractionally more expensive, but also gives them more "clout" as they've been "certified" as not possibly being bots because they were able to enter a valid card number (which can't possibly be stolen, or be a virtual card, or reused hundreds/thousands of times).

How long before to prove you're not a bot it's a cent a like, and a dime a post?
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You reckon? I don't know the ins and outs, but I imagine bot farms will be a bit harder if you need a valid credit card or whatever.
 
dlockers said:
You reckon? I don't know the ins and outs, but I imagine bot farms will be a bit harder if you need a valid credit card or whatever.
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How do you think they buy the equipment?

You can get disposable prepay cards, or one time numbers from any number of banks and the like specifically for use online or to give as gifts, and that's assuming that the people involved aren't already using stolen cards to buy the equipment (you can buy stolen card numbers online in bulk very cheaply).

This assumes that Musk has been genius enough to ensure that you can't just use the same card number repeatedly, as if he's not or his chosen payment processor doesn't do it then there is nothing to stop a bot farm from just using the same number any number of times.

It's also forgetting that the bot farms are fairly well organised and at least at the lower level will have humans involved in setting up the accounts and likely software to automate it, so it's very likely at the most all it will do is end up with them modifying their work flow or setup software so that it includes the payment stage and has a way to enter the card numbers as needed. At worst it adds probably about a minute and a dollar per bot account to something that already costs a fair whack and takes time to set up.

It certainly won't do anything to stop a lot of the biggest bot farms which are effectively state sponsored by various countries, or get a lot of their income from people for whom an increase in cost to rent per thousand accounts of a few dollars is nothing.
 
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Hmmm... I remain skeptical. I think it will definitely add some barrier to entry, and given the cost of deploying bots is usually quite low, adding a buck per bot (as they presumably get banned pretty quickly) may make it pretty prohibitive.

I guess they could just use a VPN though and connect through a country that doesn't need the dollar :D
 
Do bots get banned quickly?

With the gutted moderation team, and loss of pretty much every team and developers for the tools used to deal with bots at Twitter I'd suspect that the average bot now has a much longer usable life.
 
Every company will need a small charge to verify users, it's inevitable. It's actually how you lessen cheats in online video games, you put up barriers such as the game being relatively expensive, requiring phone verification, requiring a credit card, etc. There will always be some level of bots, it's not about reaching zero bots, but with enough barriers you severely reduce the amount. I'm sure if you took the anti-Musk blinkers off you'd realise that.
 
Werewolf said:
Do bots get banned quickly?

With the gutted moderation team, and loss of pretty much every team and developers for the tools used to deal with bots at Twitter I'd suspect that the average bot now has a much longer usable life.
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I kinda think they must be getting dealt with reasonably quickly otherwise there would be way more than there already is. I guess some are quite convincing though!
 
Werewolf said:
"not a bot" LOL

And the idea that bot farms that are spending tens of thousands just to get the hardware up and running to sell their services won't be more than willing and able to pay $1 a year to get a "Certified not a bot by Musk's genius" account is absolutely laughable.

All it does is make hiring a bot net fractionally more expensive, but also gives them more "clout" as they've been "certified" as not possibly being bots because they were able to enter a valid card number (which can't possibly be stolen, or be a virtual card, or reused hundreds/thousands of times).

How long before to prove you're not a bot it's a cent a like, and a dime a post?
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Yeah there were a few posters who claimed $8 would end bots and couldn't get their heads around why bot farms would pay to be verified. $1 a year is a bargain for them.
 
Werewolf said:
It certainly won't do anything to stop a lot of the biggest bot farms which are effectively state sponsored by various countries, or get a lot of their income from people for whom an increase in cost to rent per thousand accounts of a few dollars is nothing.
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Bot farms already stump up for verified accounts so similarly, i'm not entirely sure how $1 per year 'Not a Bot' helps that. It just looks like a forced revenue stream in an attempt to fill the void created by fleeing advertisers.

Good or bad, it also causes issues with those that want to remain anonymous, ie - whistleblowers, journalists, leakers etc, but that's more an issue with user verification.

Roar87 said:
Every company will need a small charge to verify users, it's inevitable.
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There are other methods of verifying users that doesn't require the user to have a yearly subscription like 'Not a Bot'.

Diddums said:
Aren't "bot farms" just infected computers round your nan's? :confused:
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Usually, they're using their own hardware or renting it. Botnet's, used for example launching DDoS attacks, typically use infected devices (computers, phones, internet connected hardware like cameras etc).
 
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Roar87 said:
Yeah but it's not $1 a year, it's $1 everytime they need a new account. An account can still get flagged as a bot and banned.
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And that'll have been worked into the equation for pricing.

$1 is nothing when it say already costs a few dollars per bot sim card and credit for it to connect to the host network and start up.
Bot farms are big business.

The funny thing is, the bot farmers are probably the only ones to benefit from this, as there are already bots paying $8 a month for standard "blue verified" and others paying $1000 a month for "gold numpty verified" etc, all it does is create an additional tier of budget premium bot.
 
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I don't see how X can attract any new users if people need to pay to be verified....

why not just do verification by a phone number for free if bots are the real reason for it.

it's surely a lot harder to get a new phone number than it is pay 1$ for a bunch of accounts?

what kind of bots are they trying to ban anyway? phone bot click farms probably make twitter add money?

elon was annoyed recently be AI bots scraping twitter for free but 1$ isn't a big deal for them either surely.

I bet the whole thing is just to garner extra income and that 1$ goes up quickly like a netflix or whatever sub does
 
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Seems no denial (I cannot find any) so assume this is true

www.reuters.com

Musk considers removing X platform from Europe over EU law - Insider

Elon Musk, owner of social media platform X, is considering removing the service formerly called Twitter from Europe in response to a new internet platform regulation in the region, news site Insider reported on Wednesday.
www.reuters.com www.reuters.com
 
Elon Musk (like Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary) has figured out that he can get heaps of free advertising by saying the stupidest nonsense imaginable. And people fall for it every time.

Of course he’s not going to take X out of the EU, just like Ryanair aren’t going to charge people to use the bathroom.
 
Mercenary Keyboard Warrior said:
Seems no denial (I cannot find any) so assume this is true

www.reuters.com

Musk considers removing X platform from Europe over EU law - Insider

Elon Musk, owner of social media platform X, is considering removing the service formerly called Twitter from Europe in response to a new internet platform regulation in the region, news site Insider reported on Wednesday.
www.reuters.com www.reuters.com
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Yeah I think the EU need to understand that ultimately they're in power to serve the people, who will be very unhappy if Twitter pulls out of the EU.
 
Roar87 said:
Yeah I think the EU need to understand that ultimately they're in power to serve the people, who will be very unhappy if Twitter pulls out of the EU.
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Given the EU have brought in legislation to control trillion dollar companies, i don't think a social media company worth a few billion on a good day is anything for them to worry about; Twitter isn't bigger than the EU.

Back in reality though, it's highly unlikely Musk/Twitter would go ahead with it as not only would they lose a load of users, it would further the ruffle the feathers of, as well as lose, advertisers - it would be a no-win situation for Twitter.
Better to either comply or curtail Twitter in some way for users in those markets to meet local laws.

arknor said:
why not just do verification by a phone number for free if bots are the real reason for it.

it's surely a lot harder to get a new phone number than it is pay 1$ for a bunch of accounts?
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Phone numbers/SIM cards are fairly trivial to get hold of for bot farms, which is why credit or (government) ID verification would be a better bet and make things a little harder.

arknor said:
I bet the whole thing is just to garner extra income and that 1$ goes up quickly like a netflix or whatever sub does
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The fact it's a subscription does seem to suggest this, plus credit verification doesn't typically result in the user being charged (other than a temporary 'charge' being placed on the account).
 
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