Huge numbers of fake accounts on Twitter

It seems like this should get more attention, "hundreds of thousands of counterfeit Twitter accounts set up by Russian propaganda and disinformation" that are "still active on social media today."

There has been widespread manipulation of social media, customer reviews, and trending, search ranker, and recommender algorithms using fake crowds.

All of these depend on wisdom of the crowds. They try to use what people do and like to help other people find things. But wisdom of the crowds doesn't work when the crowd isn't real.

Caroline Orr Bueno has some more details, writing that "this is the first we've heard of an ongoing campaign involving such a large number of accounts" and that it is clear this is at "a scale with the potential to mass-manipulate."

Orr Bueno also quotes former Twitter executive Yoel Roth as saying "it's all too cheap and all too easy." This is the core problem with misinformation and disinformation in the last decade.

If it is cheap, easy, and profitable to scam and manipulate using huge crowds of fake accounts, you will get huge numbers of fake accounts. The solution will have to be to make it more expensive, difficult, and unprofitable to scam and manipulate using fake accounts.