Saturday, January 27, 2018

MORE SOCIAL MEDIA FRAUD


 

 

 

"Celebrities, athletes, pundits and politicians are buying millions of fake followers online. Inside social media's black market.

(New York Times, Saturday, January 27, 2018 11:26 AM EST)

The shadowy business of social media fraud has generated millions of dollars for Devumi, an obscure company that has provided customers with more than 200 million Twitter followers, a New York Times investigation found.

These accounts, known as bots, can help sway advertising audiences and reshape political debates. They can defraud businesses and ruin reputations. Yet their creation and sale fall into a legal gray zone.

 

With a broad smile and wavy hair. She likes reading and the rapper Post Malone. When she goes on Facebook or Twitter, she sometimes muses about being bored or trades jokes with friends. Occasionally, like many teenagers, she posts a duck-face selfie.

But on Twitter, there is a version of Jessica that none of her friends or family would recognize. While the two Jessicas share a name, photograph and whimsical bio — “I have issues” — the other Jessica promoted accounts hawking Canadian real estate investments, cryptocurrency and a radio station in Ghana. The fake Jessica followed or retweeted accounts using Arabic and Indonesian, languages the real Jessica does not speak. While she was a 17-year-old high school senior, her fake counterpart frequently promoted graphic pornography, retweeting accounts called Squirtamania and Porno Dan.

All these accounts belong to customers of an obscure American company named Devumi that has collected millions of dollars in a shadowy global marketplace for social media fraud. Devumi sells Twitter followers and retweets to celebrities, businesses and anyone who wants to appear more popular or exert influence online. Drawing on an estimated stock of at least 3.5 million automated accounts, each sold many times over, the company has provided customers with more than 200 million Twitter followers, a New York Times investigation found.

 

The accounts that most resemble real people, like Ms. Rychly, reveal a kind of large-scale social identity theft. At least 55,000 of the accounts use the names, profile pictures, hometowns and other personal details of real Twitter users, including minors, according to a Times data analysi

Jessica Rychly, whose social identity was stolen by a Twitter bot when she was in high school. 

“I don’t want my picture connected to the account, nor my name,” Ms. Rychly, now 19, said. “I can’t believe that someone would even pay for it. It is just horrible.”

These accounts are counterfeit coins in the booming economy of online influence, reaching into virtually any industry where a mass audience — or the illusion of it — can be monetized. Fake accounts, deployed by governments, criminals and entrepreneurs, now infest social media networks. By some calculations, as many as 48 million of Twitter’s reported active users — nearly 15 percent — are automated accounts designed to simulate real people, though the company claims that number is far lower.

 

In November, Facebook disclosed to investors that it had at least twice as many fake users as it previously estimated, indicating that up to 60 million automated accounts may roam the world’s largest social media platform. These fake accounts, known as bots, can help sway advertising audiences and reshape political debates. They can defraud businesses and ruin reputations. Yet their creation and sale fall into a legal gray zone.

 

“The continued viability of fraudulent accounts and interactions on social media platforms — and the professionalization of these fraudulent services — is an indication that there’s still much work to do,” said Senator Mark Warner, the Virginia Democrat and ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which has been investigating the spread of fake accounts on Facebook, Twitter and other platforms.

 

Despite rising criticism of social media companies and growing scrutiny by elected officials, the trade in fake followers has remained largely opaque. While Twitter and other platforms prohibit buying followers, Devumi and dozens of other sites openly sell them. And social media companies, whose market value is closely tied to the number of people using their services, make their own rules about detecting and eliminating fake accounts.

 

Devumi’s founder, German Calas, denied that his company sold fake followers and said he knew nothing about social identities stolen from real users. “The allegations are false, and we do not have knowledge of any such activity,” Mr. Calas said in an email exchange in November.

 

The Times reviewed business and court records showing that Devumi has more than 200,000 customers, including reality television stars, professional athletes, comedians, TED speakers, pastors and models. In most cases, the records show, they purchased their own followers. In others, their employees, agents, public relations companies, family members or friends did the buying. For just pennies each — sometimes even less — Devumi offers Twitter followers, views on YouTube, plays on SoundCloud, the music-hosting site, and endorsements on LinkedIn, the professional-networking site.

 

The actor John Leguizamo has Devumi followers. So do Michael Dell, the computer billionaire, and Ray Lewis, the football commentator and former Ravens linebacker. Kathy Ireland, the onetime swimsuit model who today presides over a half-billion-dollar licensing empire, has hundreds of thousands of fake Devumi followers, as does Akbar Gbajabiamila, the host of the show “American Ninja Warrior.” Even a Twitter board member, Martha Lane Fox, has some.

 

At a time when Facebook, Twitter and Google are grappling with an epidemic of political manipulation and fake news, Devumi’s fake followers also serve as phantom foot soldiers in political battles online. Devumi’s customers include both avid supporters and fervent critics of President Trump, and both liberal cable pundits and a reporter at the alt-right bastion Breitbart. Randy Bryce, an ironworker seeking to unseat Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, purchased Devumi followers in 2015, when he was a blogger and labor activist. Louise Linton, the wife of the Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, bought followers when she was trying to gain traction as an actress."

 

 

SOCIETIES, HIERARCHIES AND CONFLICT


 

Making sense of our politics and world today is difficult. One approach to understanding requires realizing that all human societies are always “‘socially stratified.”  It means, in part, that some categories of people are in control and are deemed superior (top rung of the ladder) to other categories of people who are disvalued (bottom of the hierarchy).    Examples are India today with its caste system, South Africa under apartheid, and blacks in the South under slavery and Jim Crow laws.

These hierarchies are justified by those who are advantaged.  The status quo will be justified by a variety of arguments, including religious ones.    However, hierarchies are often challenged, and those who benefit from it will often fight change.   With regard to blacks and whites in America, the term ‘white rage’ is used to describe some of the motivation for white nationalism, and the revival of white supremacy ideas.  This paradigm could apply, for instance, to ISIS which is fighting the spread of Western values.

In the U.S., starting with Supreme Court decisions and federal civil rights laws, many whites, especially in the South, resisted the challenges to white supremacy with hatred, if not violence.  This was especially noticeable with regard to desegregating public schools.

Another example is male domination over females. This has a long history all over the world.  Wives were viewed as the property of their husbands.  Women were unfit for many occupations.  They were forbidden to vote. Women were expected to marry and become sex and baby machines, maids, cooks and for their husbands, and nannies for the man’s children.  Men were especially concerned about the sexuality of women.  Miscegenation was outlawed. A century ago, if a black man in the South was even suspected of raping a white woman, he would be lynched as soon as possible.  The superior race doesn’t want to see itself mongrelized.  You can see this in male desires control the sexuality and reproduction of their female partners.    This is one of the reasons, but not the only reason, for opposition to abortion and birth control.   It gives women control of their fertility. The sexual double-standard allowed men to be promiscuous but women were not allowed.  Women who were raped were often seen as ‘loose women” who deserved it.

Race and gender are not the only issues.  Religion and ethnicity are also factors.  White, Protestant residents of the U.S. were appalled at the influx of Catholic Irish starting in the 1830's.   Resistance to immigrants, esp.  Muslims, is now rampant.

 Social change today is more rapid than any time in U.S history.  Hierarchies are being challenged like never before.  People who are uncomfortable with change now feel threatened more than ever.  Their reactionary voices have become loud and angry.  For example, the alt-right has emerged and neo-Nazis have reemerged from the shadows.  political polarization and group animosity toward others is growing.

The nation was founded by white male Christians.   To many people who voted for Trump, “Make America Great” means restoring white, Christian male supremacy.

Many suspect that one of the reasons for the Trump victory was this reactionary movement.  Many white working-class people felt that the democrats were more interested in helping minorities, LJGBT’s etc., than white working-class people.  An 81-year-old retired police captain who voted or Mr. Trump stated that “the white man is a low person on the totem pole. Everybody else is above the white man.”