Hacker News Reader

Comment by sebzim4500 | Hacker News Reader

>The Israeli network included 510 Facebook accounts, 11 pages, one group, and 32 Instagram accounts. Meta said that it took the network down early in its audience-building efforts, before it was able to generate activity among authentic communities. The network had fewer than 500 followers on Facebook, fewer than 100 group members, and about 2,000 Instagram followers

I don't use facebook, but is this really significant compared to the enormous number of bots that I assume exist? Certainly banning 500 bots on youtube or twitter would not be noticable.

View on HN

This is the problem with reporting these numbers. Virality works like a pyramid, the effect is felt throughout the whole pyramid, but only takes the top of it to set it into action.

10,000 facebook accounts with 100 followers who then have 1000 followers is very different than 500 facebook accounts with 100,000 followers who then have 10M followers.

It doesn't take many, social media is a far greater force multiplier than people realize. Just 12 people were behind most COVID-19 hoaxes spread online, and about 10 "superspreader" accounts are responsible for about 70% of "low credibility" tweets[0,1].

[0]https://www.npr.org/2021/05/13/996570855/disinformation-doze...

[1]https://phys.org/news/2024-05-superspreaders-responsible-lar...

Didn't your quote precisely say that it wasn't very large yet? I think thats the point - to get it early.

I don't think it's the number of bots as much as who they belonged to that's being reported on. Russian activity on facebook prior to the 2016 presidential election was similarly modest.

> Certainly banning 500 bots on youtube or twitter would not be noticable.

If they were 500 independent bots, sure. If they're 500 bots that are coordinated, then I wouldn't be so sure, because the logic cuts the other way.

"Certainly spending money and political capital to run just 500 bots on youtube wouldn't move the needle and would create much useless risk."

Like the stash of midget donkey necro porn, at some point there are going to be botnets which exist in order to be caught, thus drawing attention away from the better hidden botnets — compare Obi Wan distracting Vader while R2 escapes...

(did the Allies ever leak a story that Normandy would be the target of the D-day landings, but so crudely done that it was "obviously" a plant?)

Facebook is absolutely filled with garbage. About 1% of the people I ever connected with are still active, and half of them are obnoxious users. (and the other half are delightful, why yes I do indeed want to see the vintage cookie press that made cookies from the ancestral home country that my mothers cousin found at an estate sale)

The rest of facebook for me are a couple of closed groups that are a decent community and then just tons and tons of garbage. Uncomfortable sexualization in several categories that one has to work to get FB to stop showing you, rage bait petty fake stories reposted from "Ask Abby" or /r/aita, and AI generated bait of all types like fake (movie posters | news items | celeb nonsense).

I'm pretty sure there just isn't any content left getting posted on facebook.

I have a super minimal Facebook account, just for those times when the only group or company access is via FB.

My feeling is that Facebook itself is generating a lot of the content, probably also the users and groups - at least for some benign topics.

What I see on my wall is endless posts for topics I _might_ be interested in, or tangentially might. Since many of them are architectural, and the visuals are usually obviously AI generated. And yet, they appear to show a lot of engagement: tens of thousands of comments, likes, etc. From the comments on these obviously fake posts, I must assume that most of the commentors are bots or fake accounts.

It might give the appearance (to advertisers) that Facebook is relevant.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com