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. Amazon would never work. Took over six years to break even.
    Yahoo? Never work. And don’t get me started on FaceBook. That’s going nowhere.

    Yet somehow the principals are Billionaires.

  5. There is a reason I have an assistant. It’s mostly to answer the bleeding phone and file.

    I am dreading the day my present assistant heads off into the more challenging (and much better remunerated!) sphere outside of nonprofit world.

  9. And thousands of fake donors and tens of thousands of fake voters.

    And yet, the Senate is planning on telling us who is and isn’t a “real journalist.” Which guarantees a continuation of the fraud.

    I wouldn’t be shocked to see a flood of reports at CNN, WaPo, and NYT reminding us that barack is coming up for re-election, now that his “first” term is dwindling fast.

  12. Watch your language, though. You never know what a real smart-ass might come up with when ordered to produce a “f*cking” anything.

  14. If you’ve been feeling like you’ve just about had enough…

    (Because Stacy doesn’t do open threads, I’ll risk another O/T – delete if it’s agin tha rules)

    Check out this definition of a term I first saw today, then visit the top link in Doug Ross’ “Larwyn’s Links” section.

  15. That avatar looks a bit familiar. Didn’t your old friend O.R (it that shall not be named) have a similar looking avatar at one point? The same face with smeared makeup but the makeup looks like the joker.

  17. Why should we build our own ghetto? Why should we isolate ourselves? How does that get us heard by the people we want/need to hear us? Isn’t that isolation what Stacy’s harrassers are after?

  18. You’re thinking along the lines of the “Conservapedia” model.

    I’m saying build something better, not copy something that sucks and slap a stupid “don’t anyone else come here” label on it.

    As to “why,” just re-read the reply about Amazon. If you don’t like prosperity, don’t build nothin.’

  21. Amazon sells things — and does so at a profit. Yahoo has ads. Facebook has ads. The investors in most internet businesses were buying tulips, and anyone foolish enough to start an internet business without a plan to turn a real profit is a damned fool.

    Twat-land? Long-term, it’s a money sink.

    Hell, it wouldn’t shock me to learn that their corporate plan to turn a profit is to sell puppet accounts and fake followers.

  24. Twitter doesn’t HAVE “customers”. They have *USERS*.

    Customers pay you. Customers exchange some of their earnings for your service.

    Users sap your resources while demanding more and more. And remember, the ‘l’ at the beginning of “users” is silent.

  26. Wow. There’s nothing between twat-land and “jungle drums”?

    I’m sure the attention-whores will find a suitable replacement.

  28. There may be a single source, but if that source has a bot-net, or say, knows and recruited malcontents to create multiple bot-nets, each with the program – and each robot stops at the limit of free Twitter – then watcha got here is a Federal crime. It is a form of a DDOS attack.
    Who could you have pissed off that has those kind of computer skills? And may have enough pull with the FBI for them to look the other way?

  29. I don’t entirely understand Twitter (among many, many other things), but, if Twitter is in league with the MSM, etc., isn’t it apparent that Twitter is complicit in RSM’s problems with it?

  31. That they are not abiding by their TOS and thereby enabling violation of US laws, thus putting their future shareholders at risk. Dodd Frank has whistleblower provisions that allow complaints about activities that would jeopardize stock value.

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