Well, I guess if you have fake news, you need fake readers to read it.
New York's chief prosecutor says the state is opening an investigation into a firm that allegedly sold millions of fake followers to social media users. "Impersonation and deception are illegal under New York law," said Eric Schneiderman. The company, Devumi, stands accused of stealing real people's identities, which it denies, according to the New York Times. The paper linked the "follower factory" to a host of celebrity accounts.
On its website, Devumi offers customers the chance to order up to 250,000 Twitter followers, with prices starting at $12 (£8.50). Clients can also buy "likes" and retweets.The company sells followers on a range of other platforms, including Pinterest, LinkedIn, Soundcloud and YouTube.
The report alleges that Devumi has a stock of at least 3.5 million automated accounts, many of which are sold repeatedly. It alleges at least 55,000 of the accounts "use the names, profile pictures, hometowns and other personal details of real Twitter users, including minors".
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42853067
Sister blog of Physicists of the Caribbean in which I babble about non-astronomy stuff, because everyone needs a hobby
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Review : Human Kind
I suppose I really should review Bregman's Human Kind : A Hopeful History , though I'm not sure I want to. This was a deeply frustra...
-
This is nice video which attempts to solve why the world is sometimes such a crappy place and obvious solutions don't get implemented. I...
-
"To claim that you are being discriminated against because you have lost your right to discriminate against others shows a gross lack o...
-
Three rules for any article on AI : 1) AI does not yet have the the same kind of understanding as human intelligence. 2) There is no guar...
No comments:
Post a Comment
Due to a small but consistent influx of spam, comments will now be checked before publishing. Only egregious spam/illegal/racist crap will be disapproved, everything else will be published.