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Twitter caught faking users’ tweets
- duaneb 13y agoI guess I don't quite understand the controversy. To my knowledge twitter never claimed these were legitimate tweets, and they certainly looked contrived. Who is getting fooled here and at what harm? This strikes me as typical silicon valley gossip news—ultimately worthless except to drive people to news aggregators and the offending sites. I even went on twitter for the first time in a month!
- strathmeyer 13y agoMaybe you should ask a hacker and they could explain the controversy to you? Or maybe just ask a decent human being?
- dllthomas 13y agoThe fact they were associated with real twitter accounts seems sketchy.
- nadaviv 13y agoI would see how it could be a mistake; almost any username the designer would make up is likely to be a real username.
- philwebster 13y agoYes, but they also used someone's profile picture, so I don't think that was the issue.
- blowski 13y agoEven so, this seems like outrage for the sake of outrage. Did the users suffer any kind of harm whatsoever?
- dllthomas 13y agoThey weren't paid for their endorsement.
- blowski 13y agoIt's like being focused on at a football match. They didn't 'endorse' the match or the broadcaster, and it seems like most people love their 5 seconds of fame.
- dllthomas 13y agoThat's different because they showed up at the football match, and that's all that's being relayed. They didn't endorse the match or the broadcaster, but we're also not being told they did - which is what the fake tweets are doing. “This @baristabar ad is giving me the coffee shakes. Looks so good!” “I wish I could make fancy lattes like in the @barristabar commercial,” “What is the song in the new @baristabar commercial? I love it!”
- blowski 13y agoBarista Bar is fake so they're not endorsing anything really. I agree that it's a mistake on Twitter's part, but it doesn't seem malicious or serious. Public accounts and photos have got a bit more publicity than they expected.
- dllthomas 13y agoNo, it doesn't sound malicious or serious. Article is worthwhile almost exclusively as a "hey, don't do this"
- eli 13y agoIs it still an endorsement if the thing they're endorsing doesn't exist?
- duaneb 13y ago
- philwebster 13y agoThe problem is that Twitter was using real user accounts with made-up tweets. It's ok to make up tweets for the demo, but they should have also used fake accounts.
- notatoad 13y agoYeah, they should have used fake accounts. but it's not a huge deal. "Twitter caught using real user's handles in advertising mockup" is much less of a story than "twitter caught faking users tweets".
- ctdonath 13y agoduaneb 2 hours ago | link Oh, I get it now. Putting putting words in people's virtual mouths without their permission or knowledge, then using it for advertising purposes, isn't such a good idea after all.
- kghose 13y agoLOL. That is an insightful (and Hillarious!) comment. I knew something was wrong right away, but it took me a moment to figure out what!
- coldtea 13y ago>I guess I don't quite understand the controversy. To my knowledge twitter never claimed these were legitimate tweets Thinking they are legitimate is the DEFAULT expectation. The only way for them to not claim they are legitimate tweets is to actually state, visibly, that they are NOT legitimate. And that's without even taking into account that they used REAL account names. >Who is getting fooled here and at what harm? Who the fuck told Twitter that I, as a user, want my REAL ACCOUNT HANDLE, advertising stuff I don't know about?
- alex_c 13y ago>Thinking they are legitimate is the DEFAULT expectation. Not if you're looking at a mockup in an ad. Quite the opposite, actually.
- d23 13y agoIf they hadn't used real users' names, I'd be inclined to agree. But they did, and I'm not.
- alex_c 13y agoStill disagree - when I see a mockup like that I assume it's all fake, including the user names. The surprising part isn't that the tweets are fake, but that the usernames are real.
- dllthomas 13y agoI agree that my default assumption would be that all the data was made up. If I saw a handle and photo of someone I knew, though, I'd probably assume the rest of that tweet was genuine as well.
- duaneb 13y ago> Thinking they are legitimate is the DEFAULT expectation. Maybe for someone who has never viewed an ad before (which almost entirely exist in hypothetical universes, aka fictional), but it's clearly marketing speak and not someone's actual writing.
- lnanek2 13y agoSo someone could take a screenshot of your post, put their own text in the body instead of yours, show it to millions of people, and you wouldn't mind? What company do you hate most? Microsoft? Google? So you wouldn't mind if we changed the text of your post to support them and showed your username to everyone as loving the company? And stuck your picture next to it as well? I'm mostly pissed off because the laws against using likeness/pictures/etc. to promote products without model sign off get in my way myself all the time, so seeing Twitter break the laws I have to follow is very annoying.
- tty 13y agoVentureBeat caught reporting on stories that aren't stories.
- nadaviv 13y agoThose footer links looks like they're part of the theme. Its quite common for shady Wordpress themes to add SEO links, sometimes even making them invisible to logged-in users, so that the website owner won't notice.
- redblacktree 13y agoSo that's how you make money making WP themes.
- eli 13y agoSupposedly Google's getting better at punishing that sort of behavior. But, yes.
- ianstallings 13y agoI was gonna visit this coffee bar too but now I won't because the endorsement tweets were faked! I am outraged sir. Outraged. Did that come across with the implied sarcastic tone I'm trying to convey? Because I have a solution to your problems - don't use twitter. It's really not as outlandish as you think.
- coldtea 13y agoVery good idea, every time a company or organization screws you over, just take it, and don't use them anymore. No need to complain ever. No matter if the service is otherwise needed (e.g you are a company and you need a twitter account as part of your reach strategy) or what they did was actually against the law and your rights. Heck, why didn't that Rosa Parks girl just quit using the bus services, instead of causing such a stir? (And, no, it didn't come out as sarcastic. Mostly as inane and bend-over-ish).
- ianstallings 13y agoNice false comparison of a simple annoyance to an important social cause. I'm surprised you didn't use Schindler instead. I appreciate your input.
- coldtea 13y ago>Nice false comparison of a simple annoyance to an important social cause. "Having to sit on the back of the bus" was considered a "simple annoyance" back then too. In fact they scolded her because she was making fuss about such a matter. But the idea of bending over is the same -- I just magnified it so you can see it clearly. At least you now agree it's an "annoyance". Before you had it as a "non issue". And no, a company using your account without your consent in ads is not a "simple annoyance" either. Besides not having your consent, and you not getting paid, there are business, personal and other issues to consider. E.g account X appears in the "ad" endorsing some "Barista Bar". What if X has a competing shop of his own? Or is against coffee and stimulants and writes books on health diets? What if X is an employeer in a coffee shop, and his boss sees the fake twit as him endorsing the competitor?
- Osiris 13y agoAs Reuters states, California law recognizes the right of individuals to their name and likeness, so companies cannot use people in ads without their consent. A few lines down there is an adblock with 8 stories, 4 of which have faces of celebrities.
- davvid 13y agoA few lines down there is an adblock with 8 stories, 4 of which have faces of celebrities. They may actually be violating something there. Unrelated, but one of my first jobs was for an online merchant that used very underhanded methods. They would do ad buys on Yahoo and then setup mod_rewrite rules that would show different ads to anyone from a Yahoo subnet. Therefore the ad rep would approve the ad buy, but actual users ended up seeing completely different content. Very, very seedy. This was also my shortest job ever, and I was not offended when the owner threatened to sue me if I stole the "company secrets". Hah!
- hfsktr 13y agoI don't know how it works but I imagine they (press) can use celebrity images for stories because they aren't classified as ads. Just a guess.
- mintplant 13y ago...What? Some designer used user's profiles as stand-ins when making a sample screenshot. They didn't change it out when it was released. When it was pointed out, they fixed it. So what?
- snorkel 13y agoI just assume Twitter's Terms of Service allows them to whatever they care to with your Twitter name and profile pic along with the naming rights to your child born child.
- alex_c 13y ago1) Headline is highly misleading. The "fake" tweets were for a fake product in a mockup used in an ad for Twitter's ad platform. Still a bad idea, but nowhere close to what the headline is implying. 2) The venturebeat article doesn't add anything over what appears to be the original article (http://blog.sfgate.com/techchron/2013/07/23/twitter-fakes-real-users-tweets-to-promote-ad-platform/ http://blog.sfgate.com/techchron/2013/07/23/twitter-fakes-re...).
- eli 13y agoThe headline is misleading. The problem isn't about "fake" tweets. Of course the tweets were fake, the coffee bar doesn't exist in real life. The issue is that they should have used dummy twitter handles and photos, not random real ones.
- koof 13y agoI feel so much second hand embarrassment when an article opens with an image macro.
- ryanmcbride 13y agoSame feeling when I see a tech company have memes in their recruitment ads. Definitely not the kind of company I would want to work for.
- ryanmcbride 13y agoWhy couldn't Twitter have just made up the names? It probably even would have been easier than selecting the real names that they wanted to use.
- cowpewter 13y agoAnd if you're too lazy to make up fake names and grab stock photos for an internal mockup, at least use the accounts of fellow employees and not random account holders.