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Comment by blakesterz | Hacker News Reader

This was way more interesting than I thought it would be.

"This is neither a bug nor isolated to my account. Twitter’s entire platform is propped up by misleading/inflated follower/following counts, which include accounts Twitter themselves have identified as “suspected spam accounts” (and have been identified as such for years)."

I never knew that Twitter did that “suspected spam accounts” accounts thing.

Also... he calls this an "attack", which seems like the wrong word to use somehow. They bots don't seem to be attacking him, they just follow him. Probably doesn't matter much, but I kept waiting for an "attack" to happen, but then it became obvious they're just following him.

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I think attack is perfectly appropriate. Having 10k of obviously fake accounts following you is a massive hit to your reputation.

Why have follower count anyway, I'm perfectly happy not knowing if someone with a username of monsieurbanana is a regularly commenter with a huge following or not; I know you can look at a profile to get an idea of someone's participation, participation count is a much more important or useful metric anyhow.

Status signaling which is part of how Twitter acquires it's resource base (users).

True, it's a solidly proven game mechanic that taps into feeding the ego mind - not inherently bad, however can be out of balance, "constantly on" or made prominent vs. simply a tool in a toolkit.

>Having 10k of obviously fake accounts following you is a massive hit to your reputation.

What sort of people do you hang out with?

It's similar to Amazon reviews-- if a lot of them are fake people think "well this product sucks actually, they just bought reviews." or at least "I don't actually know if this is any good"

Take it to an entertainer/journalist/politician and it's "well this person sucks actually, they aren't really anyone important and their opinion on things doesn't matter".

I don’t think it’s at all similar to Amazon reviews.

It’s relatively normal to look at Amazon reviews, but it takes a special kind of a person to browse through someones social media followers.

Well the fake bots will post fake comments and spammy links and stuff too, so it's right in front of you for the most part.

I dunno, I poke around in followers a little bit but it's usually to the tune of "what other developers follow this person? I might want to follow them too". Not that I use twitter much so eh. Maybe that only really works on the smaller accounts I usually look at. S:

I had an Airbnb guest who left our apartment a mess. I left a review that reflected that, and this person harassed my wife and I to get Airbnb to remove the review. Upon looking this person up, I found they had tens of thousands of fake Instagram followers. While not a clear indicator that I'd be dealing with a troubled individual, it was interesting to see the correlation.

When I'm buying or selling music equipment on Craigslist, if the value of the item is in the hundreds or thousands, I'll definitely do some social media research before meeting up in person, and I don't think it's ever been a make-or-break kind of thing, but it helps paint a picture of who I'll be dealing with.

people would assume you paid for them, which minor public figures like journalists, business owners, and politicians are often mocked for doing.

the type of people who value others with authentic arbitrary social reach figures.

I'd be more embarrassed for writing on Forbes. do you have any idea how easy it is to get an article on there? $100 will buy a guest post from a ton of contributors, normally done for SEO value or fake PR landscape.

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