As the revelations dawned upon the management of Twitter, and general public of course, regarding the manipulative role Russian linked trolls had played in the U.S elections of 2016, Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey, decided it was time to take action against malicious automated accounts. He also confessed that the social media domain had previously overlooked the real life negative consequences fake users on board have, and that now they want to rectify their mistakes. He asked the users to suggest ways of how to counter this issue.
The gravity of this problem can be estimated from the fact that according to a report presented by Twitter’s machine learning tools, the number of potentially fake and spamming accounts had spiked since September 2017, averaging at around 10 million as of May 2018. People/celebrities normally use these fake followers to appear more influential and important, while others may employ these accounts to malign others. The management accepted that they had seen an increase in online hate-crime, abuse and harassment over the few months. The relation between these two is obvious.
But now, Twitter is taking action. According to the rules that were announced recently, people would have to validate their accounts via authentic mobile numbers or email addresses upon joining. Without either of these, their accounts would simply fail to register. As for the existing accounts, Twitter software would hunt for spammy-fake accounts and reduce their visibilities from the platform by removing them from engagement counts.
It is hoped that these actions would reduce the usage of social media as a tool for hatred-spreader, and would help reduce incidents of cybercrime globally.
The gravity of this problem can be estimated from the fact that according to a report presented by Twitter’s machine learning tools, the number of potentially fake and spamming accounts had spiked since September 2017, averaging at around 10 million as of May 2018. People/celebrities normally use these fake followers to appear more influential and important, while others may employ these accounts to malign others. The management accepted that they had seen an increase in online hate-crime, abuse and harassment over the few months. The relation between these two is obvious.
But now, Twitter is taking action. According to the rules that were announced recently, people would have to validate their accounts via authentic mobile numbers or email addresses upon joining. Without either of these, their accounts would simply fail to register. As for the existing accounts, Twitter software would hunt for spammy-fake accounts and reduce their visibilities from the platform by removing them from engagement counts.
It is hoped that these actions would reduce the usage of social media as a tool for hatred-spreader, and would help reduce incidents of cybercrime globally.
