Tom Brewster
In the pre-millennial world, anyone who could lay claim to hundreds of thousands of followers would legitimately be able to call themselves a celebrity, possibly even a messianic leader of the masses. In today’s Twittersphere, a million followers looks good – but even that may count for nothing, thanks to fake Twitter followers.
Those with millions upon millions of followers may not be worth listening to because, while they appear to have an inordinate amount of people in thrall to each of their pithy quibbles, their popularity may be entirely bogus. Fake Twitter followers have provoked a fake identity crisis that is undermining the value of Twitter. What’s worse is that Twitter is doing little to stop it escalating.
At the heart of the problem are the individuals and ‘companies’ who are selling fake followers. An illicit ecosystem has built up around Twitter, and it’s one that will survive because its operators and beneficiaries aren’t breaking the law and they care little for Twitter’s rules.
To investigate the dodgy market further, and to see whether Twitter was doing anything to stymie its growth, TechWeekEurope set up a new account last month. Meet “Samuel Beckett”, otherwise known as @NotSpamHonest. He’s been hard at work, breaking Twitter’s rules and bragging about it. Having already been barred once from the micro-blogging site, for sending malicious links to various members of the TechWeekEurope team who subsequently reported him for spam, Beckett decided to build up his follower base. Fake people love making fake friends, you know.
So, off he trotted around the Internet looking for some new pals and came across Followersale.com. It looked like a rather professional operation, with this promotional video promising the cheapest followers in the world: Video Clip
Faking it, with Class
This ranks right up there with the sock puppets Centcom has been paying for with our tax money.
By: Tony Barstow on August 27, 2012
at 10:21 pm
By: rmiglobal on August 27, 2012
at 10:27 pm
And in related news about ‘fakes’ on the internet, ‘Julian Assange Legal’ decided it would be really helpful to the defence to submit a Freedom of Information request via the Whatdotheyknow website to Ministry of Justice.
The ‘request’ asked for the release of all documents relating to the ‘Wikileaks’ investigation – clearly they had never heard of ‘disclosure’ as it relates to the release of prosecution materials to the defence pre-trial.
Seems like some folks really don’t have any life…or give in way too easy to a few beers late at night.
On a more serious note, the problem of ‘fake’ social network profiles is only likely to grow over time. The existing controls and don’t go anywhere near true validation of identity and leave the doors wide open to abuse.
I’m not a fan of inhibiting free expression, but come on…there have to be boundaries to any social interaction – whether peer imposed, or just plain old common sense.
By: Becky Bbear on August 29, 2012
at 5:43 pm
Correction: Insert the words ‘are a joke that’ between ‘controls’ and ‘don’t’. What can I say…I’m tired.
By: Becky Bbear on August 29, 2012
at 5:46 pm