Brooks Bayne

Fakers: Round 3

Update: the fake reactivated the @melaniehawpe account. Of course, by deactivating the account you already tipped your hand, crazytown. Can’t take that one back. Oops!

Update: As of Monday morning, the account is deactivated again. Hopefully, this time it’s for good.

A follow-up to the faker story I wrote about before. I don’t know if it’s the same person/people perpetrating these fake accounts, but we need to keep track of what’s going on for the benefit of the countless dupes out there.

I don’t want to waste any more time than absolutely necessary with this. The latest “conservative” fake girl is a Twitter account known as @melaniehawpe. Here’s the bio:

New to twitter and One of the few 18 year olds that cares about politics. Very conservative.

Here’s the bogus facebook account with 10 whopping friends. Of course, most of the 10 people were old conservative dudes. You know, because most 18 year old girls wouldn’t have any girlfriends their own age as friends. Not.

Here’s the setup (note the tweet that states that people who create fake accounts are “pathetic” just before the “relative” starts tweeting about a bogus car accident.

And here’s the fake Twitter account for posterity.

My guess is that, just like the previous story with “Raquel” and “Jo Von Ho”, someone (read: some stupid middle aged guy) was pushing to get close to the faker and she used the “I had better use the hopital alibi again to get out of this situation where I’ll be found out if I allow this scenario to continue” ploy again.

Once I tweeted about the faker, it took just a couple hours for the level of Twitter conversation to drive the faker to close the @melaniehawpe account (about the same amount of time as the Raquel faker). At the time of this post, the Melanie Hawpe fake Facebook account is still active.

Next…

Scott Brown Dominates #tcot Today

After selling my last company to Amazon.com, I started a new company called, The Graph. The Graph analyzes social web data streams, which includes Twitter.

The top 10 links that have been tweeted and retweeted in the #tcot stream today *all* reference Republican Senate candidate, Scott Brown. I’ve only seen this one other time in the #tcot stream - that was during 9/12/2009 with all the #912 rallies occurring that day.

Brown is running against Democrat Martha Coakley in a special election tomorrow that could take away the dems’ filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. Much of the news linked below shows that Brown is running away from Coakley in all the polls.

These are the Brown-referenced links in order of Twitter #tcot popularity today:

http://brownforussenate.com/voter-bomb
http://www.resistnet.com/profiles/blogs/op-41-for-freedom-phase-3-3
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0110/31621.html
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Scott-Brown/178795233167?ref=ts&v=wall
http://spectator.org/archives/2010/01/18/shot-heard-round
http://www.brownforussenate.com/
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/01/dem_mayor_of_quincy_ma_endorse.html
http://www.thehopeforamerica.com/play.php?id=2811
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2010/01/18/brown-expects-to-head-to-dc-quickly-if-he-wins/
http://hotair.com/archives/2010/01/18/suffolks-bellwether-areas-showing-double-digit-lead-for-brown-on-final-day/

Kill Filters In Twitter - The Time Has Come!

If you use Twitter for #hashtag conversations, you will inevitably have trolls or spammers start to use your #hashtag. The most annoying thing, in this case, is that there’s no way to keep them out of search columns in the current versions of Twitter clients such as Seesmic Desktop or Tweetdeck (Tweetdeck has the per-column filter, but they only give you one filter per column and dozens of filters would take up too much space if you needed to filter dozens of spammers/trolls). Fortunately, for me, I’m handy with software and I can filter out these things on my own, and I don’t see tweets from undesirables, ever, but many people aren’t this tech savvy. Mixero, a new Twitter client in private beta, looks like it will include some filtering.

Other than #hashtag discussions, is the case where a user may want to filter profanity or other strings of text, like “Perez H.” (and who wouldn’t filter that nonsense?), for example.

There are a couple options for developers of Twitter clients that would satisfy their users.

1. When your software pulls the tweets from the public timeline containing the #hashtag, check to see if that user has been blocked by the logged in user, and if so, your Twitter client would filter the tweets from that person so we wouldn’t see those tweets. I could foresee the case where someone wouldn’t want this implementation, but it would be quick and easy.

Or, the more desirable, but more complex…

2. Allow users to create multiple Kill Filters

What is a Kill Filter? A Kill Filter filters out/away all messages that comply with certain rules. You could, for instance, get rid of all messages written by someone named “@dork”, eliminate all posts from any poster including a web address like “http://dork.net”, or even more advanced filters using regular expressions. To the right is a screenshot of an NNTP client’s Kill Filter editor.

In some #hashtag streams, the trolls and spammers are so bad it renders those tags almost unusable due to the volume of trash they create.

Kill Filters were used in NNTP clients and IRC clients to deal with the same problem - this isn’t a new problem. It’s time the masses, and not just us more technically advanced users, had this functionality in Twitter clients…ASAP! Loic Le Mur, are you listening?

Twitter Gets A Full 5 Minutes On The Daily Show

All of Jon’s jokes aside, Twitter is helping with the next iteration of citizen journalism, political activism and media distribution. Let’s see if politicians, traditional media and journalists can keep up.

Welcome to the Micromedia, Micropolitics and Microjournalism age. What say you, Microjournos?

The Newest Way To Game Twitter - Fake Followers

Last night, fellow Los Angelean, Jason Calacanis (@jasoncalacanis) tweeted about several folks acquiring 30k+ new followers in 6 days.



I know Jason pays attention to numbers since part of his business is watching the numbers. Jason’s an industry leader using SEO to promote his business, Mahalo. So, when Jason tweets about something other than his dogs, or poker, I usually pay attention.

Some of you are probably wondering, “So what?”. I understand. For many people this wouldn’t matter. However, there’s more than one use case for Twitter. Some people really do use Twitter for business. In this realm, more followers means more bragging rights and the appearance of more credibility. The number of followers matters to some of us.

I started looking into this and found quite a few accounts acquiring these bogus followers. For example: @veronica, @techcrunch, @anamariecox, @nytimes, @nprpolitics, @wilw, @ijustine, @mashable, @guardiantech, @pennjillette, @algore, @cnnbrk, and @wholefoods. Looks like whoever is following likes liberals and tech nerds. Just one more thing to offend my conservative sensibilites. ;)

Here’s a few screen captures of the follower graphs from Twitterholic to show the massive trend in follower counts starting on the 11th of February, 2009.

@ijustine:


@nytimes:


@guardiantech:


How did they do it? Someone is automating/scripting the creation of fake Twitter profiles and then following a select group of people. I looked at each of the aforementioned Twitter accounts to see what their followers looked like, . Almost every follower on every new page of followers had an account like this following (given the numbers on Twitter, it would have to be most of the followers on each page for these kinds of numbers - we’re talking about 5000 followers a day, that’s 250 pages of fake followers - every day!):



None of the fake accounts has a profile picture. Most of these accounts are following 20 accounts (I’m sure once the word gets out they will change their script). The pool of people being followed appears to be less than 50, however. This is an automated script that randomizes the 20 people being followed out of the pool of 50 at the time the account is created.

Who’s behind this? Dunno, but if Twitter captures the IP address of the person creating the accounts, they could easily determine who is behind this gaming approach.

What was the primary tip-off here for me? Other than the fact that people currently don’t get followers this fast? The fact that Mike Arrington (@techcrunch) and Pete Cashmore (@mashable) don’t get along at all, yet both are acquiring these same fake followers.

I was trying to do a quick analysis of this to see if there was one account that was followed more than others to determine the source. After looking at 50 pages of these bogus followers, I found that @guardiantech was at the top of the list. This seems to be corroborated by the numbers on Twitterholic. I don’t know who @guardiantech is (edit: see my comment at the bottom of the comments for clarification), or if they have the resources to be behind this, but it’s worth noting.

What’s the purpose of following all the other people if you wrote this script to boost your own follower count? Simple. So there would be many more than one account experiencing the same increase and therefore you wouldn’t stand out in the crowd.

I’ll update this as I find out new information. Please Digg this blog post. Follow me, I’m @brooksbayne.

I’m In The Twitter Timeline Again, But Now President Bush’s Speechwriter Isn’t #fail

…as of 3 weeks ago.

I was a bad blogger and didn’t follow up after I posted to Twitter regarding being back in the timeline.

The short: I didn’t hear anything from the Twitter folks until I posted on GetSatisfaction.com, a public customer service website where twitter has a presence. Within a couple days I was miraculously back in the timeline. Kudos to services like GS. Here’s the link to the thread at GS: http://cli.gs/6LyL2j

When I was finally contacted by Twitter, I received an email from them. They didn’t reply to the thread at GS. Twitter claimed I was reported as a “spammer” and it took them over a month to “research” whether or not I was a spammer. So, either a.) it’s all B.S. and people in the Twitter San Francisco HQ are sympathetic to liberal causes, will censor you, and then will drag their heels to resolve an issue like this until you make your grievance public or b.) Twitter’s system is easily gamed, whereby if enough people block you, you get blacklisted and then Twitter’s support will…drag their heels to resolve an issue like this. I mean, we’re talking about people living and working in San Francisco. It’s not really a bastion of conservative thinking in NorCal is it? Sure, have a good laugh at the conservatives being censored, right?

What prompted me to post a followup today was the fact that I just received an @ reply on Twitter from Michael Johns (@michaeljohns), a former speechwriter for George H.W. Bush, in which Johns states that he’s missing from the timeline. This happened shortly after Micheal called out Barack Obama publicly on Twitter for lying. Here’s the link to all of Michael’s tweets in Twitter’s search index: http://search.twitter.com/search?from=michaeljohns You see, there are only a few tweets in the public timeline out of his 65 ( the # at the time of this writing) tweets.

I’m going to recommend that Michael piggyback on my thread at GS and post a description of his problem publicly. I’d encourage any other conservatives to do the same if they find themselves in the same situation of being censored, either by “bug”, happenstance, or intent.

“He who controls the news controls the views.”

Twitter, you need to get this corrected ASAP. It’s really starting to look suspect - even if it isn’t. #fail

Brooks Bayne - Still Missing In The Twitter Public Timeline

Either @brooksbayne has set twitter to private mode (hiding all messages from public view), or the messages between these users were so far apart in time that we couldn’t connect them.

…or he has NOT set twitter to private mode and he’s still missing from the public timeline.

What if a liberal who worked at Twitter got offended over something you posted and decided to censor you?

What if?

I’m gonna let some of you in on a little secret. I’m a conservative, recovering Libertarian, and self-described Independent. I don’t live in a bunker in some far away “Hickville”. I live in Los Angeles. I’m sure some of the liberals reading this know that L.A. is in California, but, if at the time you’re reading this, you’re too stoned to know, let me assure you that it is.

During the 2008 election cycle, I (@brooksbayne) made some new friends via Twitter - I also made some new “not friends”. Since the election’s been over, I’ve unwittingly become the resident and leading conservative in the L.A. tech scene (does that come with a door prize?). I’m not dogmatic about my views when I discuss issues with the other side. However, I’ve been told that I can be snarky.

One fine morning, about a month ago, a liberal mommy blogger got pissed off at some harmless Motrin ad posted sympathizing with babywearers about potential neck and back pain that wearing babies can cause. This liberal blogger posted some emotional nonsense on Twitter which was subsequently picked up by Jessica Gottlieb (@JessicaGottlieb) and the #MotrinMoms hashtag was created. Feeling quite pleased with herself after her initial #motrinmoms post, Jessica posted this:



Aw, cute, I just wanna pinch her little cheeks. I wonder if she talks to her kids this way while she’s wearing them. Anway, a Groundswell ensued with people tweeting using the #motrinmoms hashtag (*for a more in-depth look at the #motrinmoms story check out Jeremiah Owyang’s blog about the topic).

FYI, I really don’t have anything against Jessica, or the aforementioned blogger, but I do think they were overreacting. Apparently, corporations can’t say *anything* about fads without getting unduly slammed for it. That’s right. I said fad. Although there are a few younger conservative women who may have been offended it seems a majority of the uproar was from the liberal corner. I asked my 5000 followers on Twitter, many of whom are conservative, if any were offended by the motrin ad. The only responses I got from my conservative mom followers were “No”. I do know of one young conservative mom who was offended, but she only repeated the #motrinmoms talking points.

You see, babywearing has been around in the conservative circles for many years, and in some cultures it’s been around as long as people can remember. Take a look at the photo below, dated 7/8/1996. Here’s an American conservative wearing a baby over 12 years ago…and it’s a man. Some of you might be thinking, “Damn, Brooks, you must’ve spent a long time trying to find this photo of a male babywearer predating the current babywearing fad on the Interwebz.” Well, actually, for those of you who know me can tell, that’s me in the photo along with my son right after he was born. Yeah, I know a thing or two about babywearing. Back then, the liberals I knew thought we were crazy for babywearing. My, how things have changed. As a babywearer, if ever there were an issue that could be described as a tempest in a teapot, it would be the motrin babywearing ad.

“But Brooks, you can’t say this is some new fad.”

Yes we can!

Let’s take a look at the evidence of how babywearing has trended. We can examine the 3 top resulting websites on Google for the term “babywearing” and the history of their content.

By Google search rank:

1. babywearingconference.com - registered 05-jan-2007 - content shortly after.
2. thebabywearer.com - registered 23-jul-2003 but no babywearing information until September of that year per the Internet Wayback Machine.
3. babywearing.com - registered in 30-jul-2001 *but this domain originally pointed to another domain that had *nothing* to do with babywearing when it was registered. In fact, there’s no babywearing information for this domain until late 2004 per the Internet Wayback Machine.

Next, we can look at Google’s blog indexes to gauge the propagation of the term “babywearing” in the blogosphere.

Google blog search has a whopping 5 blog posts indexed between January 2000 and the December 2003. However, from the January 2004 thru December 2007 over 12,000 blog posts were indexed. In 2008 alone, there have been over 35,000 blog posts indexed.

So, based on the above information, we can see the babywearing trend didn’t really get under way until 2004. Where we see a huge upswing in the stats for the term babywearing is in 2008. I wouldn’t say babywearing has “crossed the chasm” just yet.

I know, I know, you’re wondering what this all has to do with the title of this blog post.

Well, the last tweet of mine that was available in the public timeline and in http://search.twitter.com was my snarky tweet in response to the whole overblown Motrin ad debacle. See for yourself: http://search.twitter.com/search?from=brooksbayne



Obviously, as a man who’s been a babywearer for longer than most of these newer upstart women babywearers, I think I would have a valid opinion about the hype over this. However, since posting that tweet, my newer tweets have not been posting to the public timeline and my posts are missing from search too. My Twitter account isn’t hidden/protected by me because you have to select the “protect my updates” checkbox to hide your profile. Mine’s not checked.



I first noticed something was up because I used Qwitter, now defunct, to let me know when people stopped following me. Days went by and all my Qwitter emails referred to that older #motrinmoms tweet of mine. Qwitter would list the last tweet you posted when someone quit following you. Since this was the last tweet of mine that was posted “publicly”, all my Quitter emails referred to it until the time Qwitter had it’s plug pulled by its devs, Contrast. I contacted the guys at Contrast. Here’s that exchange.



I’ve submitted 3 support requests to the folks at Twitter, but they haven’t responded. Twitter did respond to another unrelated support request within a couple days and resolved that issue. Interesting to note is the support request I submitted for this issue. Look at the the line marked (by me) with the red arrow in the pic below where it says “USER IS hidden on public timeline”. My account is obviously not hidden by me. A normal hidden account looks like this secondary account I created: http://twitter.com/bbayne. My primary account isn’t hidden by me. So, how did my account become “hidden” in the public timeline?



I’m one of the the Top Conservatives on Twitter and I can’t post tweets with that group’s hashtag: #tcot. I mean, I can add the hashtag to my tweets, but if any people want to follow that hashtag using tools like Tweetdeck, they won’t see my tweets, because Tweetdeck searches hashtags in the public timeline.

It’s purely coincidental that my last post in the public timeline was regarding #motrinmoms, right? Although, theoretically, it wouldn’t be difficult for the devs to create another Bit column in Twitter’s database and keep people’s posts from hitting the public timeline and search by marking them hidden behind the scenes, but that would be censorship. Is @brooksbayne being censored by a liberal at Twitter who is sympathetic to the #motrinmoms? I have a feeling we’re about to find out.

*Edit - Included a link to Jeremiah Owyang’s blog about the #motrinmoms flap to provide context for the scope of the brouhaha.

Liberals Being Intolerant On Twitter Again - This Time Over Prop 8

xtopher42: Retweeting @jacobjackson: The bigots who voted for Prop 8 can die in a fire.
meredithmo: So many emotions this morning. I’m overwhelmed.We’re solid as Barack, but Prop 8 supporters need to die in a fire.
gazellesoncrack: I’m waiting for CA Prop 8 results & want to say if my best friend isn’t married tomorrow, I will kick each &every voter until they die.
0Randy0: Prop 8 supporters can eat shit and die
wilw: Resolved: the next asshole who encourages me to vote yes on prop 8 via bigoted flyer on my doorstep will be encouraged to die in a fire.
Smalltimejazz: PROP 8 can go to hell. Fuck religion.
_jas_: After Prop 8, it’s clear that religious groups shouldn’t be a protected class of people under the law. Oppressors needn’t be protected.
Melindhra: @RJToronto Prop 8 is bullshit. I can’t believe that anyone wouldbe stupid enough to vote for it.
FearCake: I hate to say it but finding out that over 70 percent of blacks voting for prop 8 makes me very distrustful of themas a whole.
_jas_: It’s laughable that the LDS was such huge supporter of Prop 8. Can they really be protectors of marriage? Polygamist bigots.
ajkl27: the whole prop 8 thing makes me wanna move to california and go on a jason style rampage
timbond: @pdxmikek I am with you there. I can’t get over the evil that is Prop 8
JamesJumpsuit: Fuck my parents for voting YES on prop 8,stupid hairy cunts!
Plaid23: I truly wish death on those who supported prop.8 in Cali.An amendment to limit freedom? Shame on you! Please die soon and horribly!
sleepingschnauz: mad that prop 8 passed.stupid right Wing christians.
nexusdivine: fuck you prop 8…fuck you.right in the ass.with a REAL mans cock.
electasy: Today just SUCKS! Prop 8 SUCKS! 52% of California?s population SUCKS! /cry
jhorsley3: to California any anyone who supported it - FUCK YOU FOR PROP 8
Miss_AnnThrope: also, I’m going to go take a shit on some yes for prop 8 signs, anyone wanna join?
deets: Fuck you California and the Mormon Church for passing Prop 8. Seriously, go fuck yourselves
urban_ryoga: Is restraining himself from pissing on all Yes on Prop 8 signs
Ryudo9: prop 8 can eat donkey cock cheese, that’s just messed up. Like a giant dump on the bill of rights
whatszachdoing: california voted yes on prop 8. FUCK YOU CALI! FUCK YOU LONG AND HARD! no offense @Myrindaside + @leslie666
barr: With prop 8 passing, the next person who says CA is a liberal state should be punched in the mouth
timylee: Not all battles were won last night, shocked by the passing of Prop.8 (aka,Prop. Hate) in Cali. Talk about a dose of bigotry.
sfosav: After Prop 8 I have no faith in religion.Who are religious nutbags to say who marries who. F you Church.
eschaton: I won’t be leaving politics behind, especially the abomination that is Prop 8. If you voted for that, you may as  well have joined the Klan.
Merosmash: Hey California … WTF IS WITH PASSING PROP 8, YOU HORRIBLE BASTARDS? (not all of you, 48% of you are cool)
girliedrummer: DD: i cannot believe that Prop 8 was passed! i’m ticked!!! everyone who voted for Prop 8 is a bunch of homo-phobic bitches!!!
ShadowSync: The passing on Prop 8 is a piece of Henious fuckery most foul.
skywaterblue: Just remember about Prop 8: We are many. We are legion. We cannot be stopped. We have over 9000 PENISES ALL RAPING YOUR CHILDREN.
eschewcapitals: seriously, is anyone actually happy with the outcome of prop 8? (and if you are, i’d advise you getaway from me quickly)
erikthedane: To the fucktards in CA that voted in Prop 8, may you never know the happiness you are trying to deny people.
sprigglebot: Fuck prop 8!
spleenless1der: I think passing Prop 8 lowered the state IQ by a few points…seriously, the idiots are out en masse :-(
Meredith122: If you voted for prop  8 FUCK YOU

Let’s see, threats of death, many by fire (fire? no idea, must be some gay retribution thing), and plenty of ad hominem statements (if they even qualify that high), hate speech against blacks and Christians, or mostly just vitriolic tirades. Take a look through Twitter’s search engine and try to find a Prop 8 supporter engaging in such behavior. I couldn’t.

many_eels: I’m not sure of i want prop 8 to go to the supreme court just yet. I’m scared of what they’ll say

Anyway, I included the last tweet above since “many_eels” seemed to be the smartest one of the bunch. After Prop 8 was decided by the people, several law suits were filed claiming “foul”. However, the gay rights groups have called for people not to file cases in federal court. Pushing this issue now and having the case ultimately fail in front of the Supreme Court will take gay marriage off the table for generations. Gays, it’s your call. Let this drop now for a bit, or get spanked at the federal bench? Although, some of you might like the sound of that.