Crime Is a People Problem: Why @Twitter Must Prosecute Fake Account Makers

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How hard is it to miss this as a Twitter avatar? As thousands upon thousands of fake accounts — all of them evidently generated by an algorithmic software program — have piled on following me on Twitter, I have tried to point out the obvious pattern:

That all of these fake accounts are so similar, and use a limited number of avatar images, it seems logical that locating the source of this fraudulent menace would be simple, as would identifying and deleting all of the bogus accounts created by this criminal scheme.

What is shocking to me is that people continue telling me that I need to do this or that thing — download some software, visit a certain Web site, switch my account settings — in order to prevent this fake swarm. No, no, no — that’s wrong. This is Twitter’s problem. Twitter’s service is being used fraudulently, and it is incumbent on Twitter to prevent their law-abiding users from being targeted by criminals.

Also: CRIME IS A PEOPLE PROBLEM.

This is an old-fashioned common-sense idea that contradicts what has become Conventional Wisdom in the post-modern age.

Crime does not occur randomly within society. Not all persons are equally prone to commit theft, robbery, assault, rape or murder.

The vast majority of serious crime is committed by a rather tiny segment of the population — people who are habitual criminals, and who will not cease to be a menace to their fellow citizens until they are put in prison or sent to their graves.  Some juvenile delinquents will, as they mature, grow out of their youthful lawlessness, but fear of severe punishment (including long incarceration) for criminal acts is the only possible deterrence to those who are habitually devoted to a life of crime.

Law enforcement is most effective when it understands that crime doesn’t just “happen” randomly or coincidentally, but is the result of human action, and that the purpose of law enforcement is to locate, identify, apprehend, prosecute and imprison wrongdoers.

Think about this: If you go into a community and see iron bars on people’s windows, does that make you feel safe? No, it has the opposite effect. Where law-abiding citizens are so fearful that they live behind locked doors and don’t dare walk the streets at night, you know that criminals are being allowed to roam free, and that the criminal population in that community is so large and active that the police have effectively surrendered control of the streets.

The same thing is true of the online community. If spammers, hackers, perverts and other criminals are allowed to use the Internet for their illegal purposes without consequence — if online criminals do not fear apprehension and prosecution — you can be sure that the law-abiding Internet users will be forced to fight an ever-escalating war of defense against the wrongdoers. The more common cyber-security becomes, the more sophisticated will become the methods by which criminals seek to evade cyber-security.

Online as in real life, every time a criminal gets away with illegal activity, he will be emboldened to further crimes, until he becomes so arrogant about his ability to evade prosecution that his continued spree of criminality is like an advertisement of the ineffectiveness of law enforcement: “You can’t catch me, cops!” Where wrongdoers no longer fear justice, the innocent must always fear wrongdoers.

Twitter is permitting this lawlessness. If they were genuinely determined to prevent the mass creation of fake accounts, there would not be — there could not be — these tens of thousands of fakes that have descended on my account like Egyptian locusts. After nearly 48 hours of this plague, I’m not just angry about the harassment, I’m becoming angry at other people for not being angry about it.

DEL HARVEY ENABLES NEAL RAUHAUSER?

Go read that. You should be very angry.

 

UPDATE: Really, could it be more obvious?

The fact that these accounts — tens of thousands of them — are being manufactured by an algorithmic program should make detection of the source simple, if Twitter were really serious about stopping the mass manufacturing of such fake accounts. Because Twitter evidently doesn’t care, the criminals have no fear of being prosecuted, and therefore don’t even bother to conceal their fraudulent activity.

 

128 comments

  2. I’m not saying that this isn’t something that Twitter should address, but if people know of some relatively effective remedies, RSM ranting against them is reminiscent of slutwalk denizens.

    I denounce myself.

  3. It seems Twitter is succumbing to that which plagues all online communications and social media: Bad people quickly figure out how to use it for nefarious purposes, whether it’s spam, pron, or whatever. I don’t know how prevalent this sort of thing is, but if you’re at the front end of the trend, it may take awhile for Twitter to program a reliable counter. I don’t know; I’m completely ignorant about such things. It just seems that the online community is doomed to perpetual reaction to the bad guys.

  5. Look, I switched my account to “protected” status, notified @support of the problem and when I returned to unprotected status, still the fakes kept flooding in, all of them produced by this same algorithmic program, which tells us that there is a single source for this particular problem.

    The accounts targeted by this tactic were not random, OK? When Aaron Walker, John Hoge and myself are all targeted in a 48-hour span, it’s not hard to guess the motive.

    So we know (a) it’s a single-source problem and (b) the targeting is not random. And therefore, I commenced raising hell about it.

    Guess what? As of 3 p.m., the incoming swarm of fake accounts has stopped.

    Just a coincidence? I think not.

  6. Sersiously, It does seem like the mega batches inficted on you and others could be traced back to a likely source and that source banned from creation of new accounts. Is there some reason twitter wouldn’t want to do this?

  11. As a non-Twitter user, it is hard for me to get too upset about this. Of course, it could be argued that if miscreants were targeting some service that I use, I would feel differently. Not necessarily. If it is something I am paying for, then yes, I would expect that those who are collecting my money to take steps to continue to keep me happy, at least if they want to retain my business. But, some free service, like Wikipedia, for example? No. I just resign myself to the fact that it is a politically biased outlet and then act accordingly. If I want to know more about the Voyager 1 program, they are probably a good place to start. If I want to see a balanced analysis of Obamacare, not so much.

    Of course, there is nothing wrong with RSM’s strategy in trying to shame Twitter into taking more effective countermeasures against lefty abusers. I just don’t think he will really be all that effective in getting them to implement real change.

  14. I see this all the time in my line of work (I do telecom). We get a group that wants their main line to ring on one group of phones, after 4 rings go to another group, after 4 more rings go to Group 3. Then if nobody answers, go to voicemail but let the caller press 0 to transfer out to start the whole cycle over again. Four weeks later, I get yelled at because all of their customer are unhappy.

    At that point, I tell them again that technology is not a substitute for management, and all the phone programming in the world can’t make somebody pick up the *$#*!$# phone. I am then not surprised when they still don’t get it.

  15. It kills me how people think it’s up to the user of the service to protect one self from the crappy service. I see this in fraud “followers,” like what you point out here.

    I also see this in instances where a social network decides it’s going to violate the privacy of the users, but then it makes the user go through steps to “op-out” of said violation. Even worse when the opting-out is called something like “hiding,” like we are the ones doing something shady.

  16. My point is, this is happening because Twitter has been willing to look the other way and pretend they didn’t notice fake-account vendors who sell phony followers by the thousands. The fact that this particular tactic was used against me — most likely by certain leftists waging a personal/political vendetta — simply serves to highlight the underlying issue, i.e., Twitter’s hands-off attitude toward commercial fake-follower vendors.

  17. Then they’ll think they are fixing the problem by converting to WiFi-based signaling, only to discover that people leave their devices in notifications-off mode all the time, or the batteries keep running low.

  18. “SOMEBODY ANSWER THE GODDAM PHONE!”

    Y’know, it’s young people — junior staff nowadays — who don’t get the “customer service” mentality. They have no understanding that an eagerness to serve others is the key to real success. They have the idea that they’re getting paid just to show up for a certain number of hours each day, and are entitled to things that, in fact, they should be striving to earn by hard labor.

    So, yeah, kid: Shut up telling me how to run the business and ANSWER THE FUCKING PHONE.

    And when your done with that, get me a cup of coffee.

  19. I know two very effective remedies.
    One will get you arrested.
    The other is to push twitter aside and make something better. For some reason, Conservatives tend to be the antithesis of Steve Jobs when it comes to making stuff better. On the other hand, Conservatives are the best at making sure exacting things are done correctly and on time.

  22. It took several years for Google to get off the couch and deal with SEO optimizers who flooded the web with dead sites full of crap info, which made it ridiculously difficult to fight the dead sites that were built to abuse someone’s reputation. (Naturally, it required a flood of crap back in the other direction.)

    Now Google seems all too welcoming of scraper sites that basically plagiarize with impunity. It’s made sure Google is headed back toward the old Yahoo! search days.

    Worse, Google removed the “blocked sites” feature that helped minimize the damage the plagiarists do. It’s really about the same dick move as removing the ability to block a twitter account.

    Don’t look for a solution from Twitter. You’ll probably find one built into some sort of platform/app that uses the twitter datastream.

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