Are Bots/Fake accounts a ligitimate question?

[Wallace Wirefly]

As some know Elon Musk has asked about Bots/Fake accounts for Twitter. One wonders why should this matter. One might suppose it indicates the health of a business or maybe in twitter's case the effects these may have on it's content and platform. As one wanders about Second life, which by the way is the largest area in multi-verse, one notices "avatars" just standing around in various poses. Also when one logs in, as everyone needs to do assuming one logs out, you see the statistics of how many are "in-world". How many are really "in-world"? Are there ones who never log out? ( of course except for the dreaded sim restarts). But then there are those who will just be sent to another place to stand. Are there "avatars" created for just that purpose? Spawned every so often to keep the count of those "in-world" a healthy level? So when Elon questions Twitter what is the purpose? Twitter states that they are only about 5 % of those accounts. Really? Will the real data come forth? So what is the "real" in-world count for Second Life and the percentage of these "zombies"? Does it matter to the business? Question that maybe Elon may get. Will the statistics of Second Life ever appear again? 🤷‍♂️

[Bree Giffen]

Second Life doesn't generate revenue the same way Twitter does. Twitter is a free service to users. It receives revenue from advertisers who sell ads to those users. These advertisers require good information on how many people they are reaching and can quickly stop advertising if they don't believe in Twitter's population. A fake population makes Twitter vulnerable to massive losses. SL on the other hand generates revenue through fees for land, goods and other stuff. These fees are paid by it's users. 

[Coffee Pancake]

Bots in SL are over reported, yes they exist, but not in the huge numbers some might suggest. Those that are used come in two flavors. The fairly active "survey" bots that constantly teleport around gathering region statistics, and utility bots that perform group invites or populate AFK sex places. Gaming traffic was a use for bots, but that has sloped off since stores no longer depend on in world locations as a primary income, the event ecosystem (and weekend sales especially) have largely replaced that practice with real people.

AFK or silent avatars are often mistaken for or accused of being bots, when likely they are real people who aren't following local chat or have no desire to respond to inane "how r u" attempts at conversation. People do log into SL for extended periods, plenty stay logged in while they are sleeping.

There was a period recently where access to SL was broken for all clients using an external library to connect to SL, this did not affect regular users on regular full fat viewers, only bot clients. This resulted in barely any impact to the live feed of active user stats.

 

SL is also really large, we all have homes and private spaces, and only a fraction of us are online at any given time .. and those who are clump up. So SL can feel empty regardless of what the published population count  might state.

 

I've written an open source script that will show the ebb and flow of SL population during the day from live published stats.

https://github.com/0xc0ffea/SecondLife-PopulationMeter

 

[Phil Deakins]

Are Bots/Fake accounts a ligitimate question?

It's a very legitimate question for Elon Musk, but no longer a question that's worth asking for SL.

Musk wants to know how many people, not accounts, could read ads if he buys Twitter. Divide the number of accounts that LL claims by 4, and you probably won't be too far off the number of people who have created accounts.

The previous two posts explain it all very well, but the thread title has the word 'Bots' in it, and I felt an irresistible urge to chip in 😁

 

Edited June 9, 2022 by Phil Deakins

[Love Zhaoying]

How do we know the OP isn't a bot or fake account?

You may scoff, but if LL takes away our orbs, next they will come after our bots!

[Phil Deakins]

It's not possible to have a "fake account". An account is an account is an account. So the OP can't be a fake account. Could be a bot though. We just don't know.

[Love Zhaoying]

I was kind of riffing on the news that Twitter deleted a massive number of "fake accounts" recently. Whatever "fake accounts" are.

[Sid Nagy]

Well. pres Trump used tot tweet under the name the real Donald Trump.
So there must be fake one too on Twitter I guess.

[Phil Deakins]

49 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I was kind of riffing on the news that Twitter deleted a massive number of "fake accounts" recently. Whatever "fake accounts" are.

Maybe a fake account is considered to be one where the named person is a fake person. The account can't be fake though 🙂

The question of what is a bot comes to mind though. According to the Scripted Agent Status page that's in everyone's account, for an agent to be a bot it has to be programmed to perform certain tasks automatically. So, technically, an avatar logging in and simply staying where it lands and doing nothing at all isn't a bot, even though it's counting for traffic on the land where it is, and the person who logged it in does nothing with it.

 

[Love Zhaoying]

4 minutes ago, Sid Nagy said:

Well. pres Trump used tot tweet under the name the real Donald Trump.
So there must be fake one too on Twitter I guess.

My understanding is, in the context of Twitter, "fake accounts" falsely represent some individual; in reality, the accounts were part of some collective effort to influence (whether political outcomes in different countries, public opinion, etc.) or mine personal information (for scams via phishing, account impersonation, etc.).

With this understanding, my question becomes: how do we know the same types of "collective" accounts, intended to influence or do harm, don't exist in Second Life?

[Ardy Lay]

Perhaps we can determine the legitimacy of the question by jamming it into a context.

In SL, I only care when their bot-like behavior becomes a problem.  There are several chat bots in SL that get ejected every time they arrive.  Don't need them.  They annoyed the residents.

I don't use Twitter.  I would suspect that advertisers on Twitter would initiate legal action if Twitter were to admit how many Twitter accounts are not used by people viewing content in the expected ways.

[Qie Niangao]

2 hours ago, Phil Deakins said:

The question of what is a bot comes to mind though.

That's going to be a big problem for Musk, especially now that Twitter has said it will comply with the request for bot data. For them to agree, they must know with high certainty that the number of actual programmed clients is less than the 5% claimed. On the other hand, a very large number of Twitter accounts don't use real names, so if those could be claimed "fake accounts" Elon could bail out of the deal, penalty free.

It's not as if Musk actually cares how many bots (of any kind) are on Twitter. He knows all the ad revenue figures. Nobody else is to blame for Elon's fever dream of magically increasing those. It's just that Twitter has reported the 5% bot number to the SEC, making it the sole reason his lawyers have found that might conceivably get him off the hook without paying the $1 billion penalty to back out of the $50 + 420¢ deal that looked addle-brained even when it was made, back before most other tech stocks tanked.

[Lucia Nightfire]

11 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Gaming traffic was a use for bots, but that has sloped off since stores no longer depend on in world locations as a primary income, the event ecosystem (and weekend sales especially) have largely replaced that practice with real people.

This is still abused in stores, but moreso in clubs and adult venues and I do not mean AFK.

Look at any location that repeatedly has high traffic and a cluster of "users" far away from any social gathering area, typically at high altitude.

Where the commerce is supposed to happen in the region, you'll find almost no one.

Edited June 9, 2022 by Lucia Nightfire

[Rowan Amore]

11 minutes ago, Lucia Nightfire said:

This is still abused in stores, but moreso in clubs and adult venues and I do not mean AFK.

Look at any location that repeatedly has high traffic and a cluster of "users" far away from any social gathering area, typically at high altitude.

Where the commerce is supposed to happen in the region, you'll find almost no one.

I recently went to an escort club that had a listing in the employment section.  I opened the map before tping and saw quite a few people.  Upon arrival, the actual club was empty.  I cammed to the 12 or so avatars listed on radar.  All in a skybox.  All library avatars except 2 that were weird little children.

I've seen this numerous times at venues listed high in search.  

 

 

[Love Zhaoying]

7 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

I recently went to an escort club that had a listing in the employment section.  I opened the map before tping and saw quite a few people.  Upon arrival, the actual club was empty.  I cammed to the 12 or so avatars listed on radar.  All in a skybox.  All library avatars except 2 that were weird little children.

I've seen this numerous times at venues listed high in search.  

Would you classify those as "traffic bots"?  (I just made that term up, not sure what the legacy term is.)

[Rowan Amore]

13 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Would you classify those as "traffic bots"?  (I just made that term up, not sure what the legacy term is.)

Personally, I would but everyone has said traffic isn't calculated as it used to be.  There was on particular beach that would ALWAYS be near the top of search.  Every single time I went there, it was basically empty at ground level where the beach and club were located.  You could plainly see a cluster of avatars up high, standing around on a platform.  So, can someone tell me how those aren't effecting traffic?  Or is it just people like me, popping into a 'busy' place and then leaving that creates the traffic?

[Sid Nagy]

18 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Would you classify those as "traffic bots"?  (I just made that term up, not sure what the legacy term is.)

I think that the term traffic bots is spot on, when SL is concerned.
Generate attention bots is a bit long isn't it?

[Sid Nagy]

2 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

Personally, I would but everyone has said traffic isn't calculated as it used to be.  There was on particular beach that would ALWAYS be near the top of search.  Every single time I went there, it was basically empty at ground level where the beach and club were located.  You could plainly see a cluster of avatars up high, standing around on a platform.  So, can someone tell me how those aren't effecting traffic?  Or is it just people like me, popping into a 'busy' place and then leaving that creates the traffic?

What makes more people TP to your place?
Top of the list with 0 traffic or further below with reasonable traffic?
I personally think the last one.
So as long as traffic is shown in the search results, it matters somehow I guess.

[Rowan Amore]

Just now, Sid Nagy said:

What makes more people TP to your place?
Top of the list with 0 traffic or further below with reasonable traffic?
I personally think the last one.
So as long as traffic is shown in the search results, it matters somehow I guess.

If I'm actually looking for people, I assume those at the very top are as I described above.  The thing is, newer people will go to those places and then wonder where the heck every is at.  I don't use the web search from LL so I have no idea if that populates the same as the legacy search in Firestorm.  

[Lindal Kidd]

13 hours ago, Wallace Wirefly said:

So what is the "real" in-world count for Second Life and the percentage of these "zombies"?

Darn it! You have exposed me.

[Syo Emerald]

14 hours ago, Wallace Wirefly said:

As some know Elon Musk has asked about Bots/Fake accounts for Twitter. One wonders why should this matter. One might suppose it indicates the health of a business or maybe in twitter's case the effects these may have on it's content and platform. As one wanders about Second life, which by the way is the largest area in multi-verse, one notices "avatars" just standing around in various poses. Also when one logs in, as everyone needs to do assuming one logs out, you see the statistics of how many are "in-world". How many are really "in-world"? Are there ones who never log out? ( of course except for the dreaded sim restarts). But then there are those who will just be sent to another place to stand. Are there "avatars" created for just that purpose? Spawned every so often to keep the count of those "in-world" a healthy level? So when Elon questions Twitter what is the purpose? Twitter states that they are only about 5 % of those accounts. Really? Will the real data come forth? So what is the "real" in-world count for Second Life and the percentage of these "zombies"? Does it matter to the business? Question that maybe Elon may get. Will the statistics of Second Life ever appear again? 🤷‍♂️

First of all, Twitter and Second Life are very different. A lot of Twitters value relies on how many of their accounts are *real people* and not one dude with 20 sock puppets. Social Media apps generate their market value by this. Because it suggests to advertisers and other business people that this thing is actually used and that their advertisement on the app won't be wasted on less real people, than they expect. Second Life does not operate like this. The only people interested in the amount of real people in SL would be other users, but not whoever owns the plattform, because they just care about the money that they get out of SLs revenue streams.

Independend of how important the question of % fake/bot accounts is, its something Elon Musk has a right to ask in the process of purchasing Twitter. Its a business stat and knowing it is part of not buying the cat in the sack. Now the true hot water is, that there are hints that Twitter might have not been so honest about that 5%. That they made their own statistics prettier. This would give Elon the legal ground to back out of the deal with Twitter and that would be something that is likely to be very negative for the app.

So independend of how important it is to know the percentage of fake and bot accounts on a social media app, the true nature of Elon asking this question is probably more of a strategic motive, instead of a pure buyer motivation.

 

[Coffee Pancake]

Elon is just trying to skip out on the deal because .. shock surprise .. he was never actually going to buy bird site and the whole adventure has just been yet another 100% on brand stock manipulation

[Ardy Lay]

58 minutes ago, Syo Emerald said:

Now the true hot water is, that there are hints that Twitter might have not been so honest about that 5%.

I like to imagine Twitter being in that hot water because of lying to their advertisers.  BOILED BIRD anybody?

[Fritigern Gothly]

16 hours ago, Wallace Wirefly said:

As some know Elon Musk has asked about Bots/Fake accounts for Twitter. One wonders why should this matter.

Bots and fake accounts are not going to click any ads. That's the whole issue that both Elon and twitter have with these accounts. They take up space and don't create revenue.

[Lewis Luminos]

20 hours ago, Wallace Wirefly said:

As some know Elon Musk has asked about Bots/Fake accounts for Twitter. One wonders why should this matter. One might suppose it indicates the health of a business or maybe in twitter's case the effects these may have on it's content and platform. As one wanders about Second life, which by the way is the largest area in multi-verse, one notices "avatars" just standing around in various poses. Also when one logs in, as everyone needs to do assuming one logs out, you see the statistics of how many are "in-world". How many are really "in-world"? 

It matters for Twitter because Twitter is financed by advertising. You can't advertise to a bot, so advertisers don't want them there. If the presence of bots on Twitter means that they are earning less, that's not great news for the platform. In Secondlife it doesn't matter because Linden Lab's revenue doesn't depend on showing ads to logged-in users That's why bots are not just tolerated/ignored, but actively permitted.

Edited June 9, 2022 by Lewis Luminos