2y ago

Chinese sextortion scammers are flooding Twitter

restofworld.org

Scammers are targeting Chinese-language users, harassing political dissidents and influential figures.

Technology @kbin.social

0x815 @feddit.de

2y ago

Scammers are targeting Chinese-language users on Twitter, harassing political dissidents and influential figures

restofworld.org /2023/chinese-sextortion-scammers-are-flooding-twitter/

World News @lemmy.ml

stopthatgirl7 @kbin.social

2y ago

Chinese sextortion scammers are flooding Twitter

restofworld.org /2023/chinese-sextortion-scammers-are-flooding-twitter/

46 comments

Honestly, the only real solution is leaving Twitter. With the plan to remove the block feature this will only get worse and worse. I really don’t see this sort of thing getting better anytime soon or later.
Some options: Mastodon is great, push through that initial anxiety about servers and just hop on. Not threads! Unless you’re okay with FaceBook taking, very literally, all your data. Bluesky I’ve heard is okay, but it’s another billionaire project that has an algorithm to do whatever they want.
- How do you find people you want to follow on other instances with mastodon? I've tried searching all kinds of ways with username and instance, but it doesn't find the people I'm looking for (specific accounts)
  
  https://www.theverge.com/23519279/mastodon-instance-follow-friend
  
  trending works great now, hashtags always worked, and many apps support features like following instances. The search feature is upcoming so maybe wait for that to drop
- I really think Elon just wants to destroy twitter to finally put an end to that hellhole
  
  If he was competent at that, he wouldn't be sinking it alongside his own reputation, he'd get his puppet CEO to undermine it and then call it inevitable.
  I think he wants this X app to be a thing, he just has no idea what he's doing
  
  Yeah, nah.
  More likely situation is the ma child is simply bad at running a business. This is backed up by his history.
"The new verification system will prevent bot spam!" - Some rich guy who has no idea how the internet works
Seriously, it's been such a pain reading Chinese content on Twitter/X/whatever. If you post any stuff that says something critical about China, no matter if it's news, opinions, or just shit posts, and have some amount of Chinese speaking followers, you are now guaranteed to have sex-bots spam commenting your every post. And you can't do anything about it, since they have multiple accounts, and some just leave the comment and block you so you can't remove it.
Edit: grammar
- some just leave the comment and block you so you can't remove it.
  Wait, is someone comments on a post, then blocks the OP that comment can't be deleted?
  
  I haven't dealt with them personally before, but I did ask a poster before if they could hide the spam comments, and they said no since they couldn't see it.
- It’s going to be an even bigger mess if Elon goes through with getting rid of block and only leaving people with a mute. There won’t be any way to stop these porn bots.
  
  There won’t be any way to stop these porn bots.
  No, there is a way...
- There are a ton on twitter generally, more than 80 percent of my followers on a small account are obvious fake profiles/porn bots. But they don't reply often, they mostly like.
Stop using shitter.
- You sound like my boss
They are all over LinkedIn with really obvious fake profiles. LinkedIn is doing nothing to stop it.
- LinkedIn is feeling like abandonware.
  
  It may as well shut their doors in my opinion. No amount of changes or marketing is going to turn it into what they wanted it to be at this point. It's at the point where if someone starts casually talking about LinkedIn they get sideways glances as to why they would even be using it, unless they work in HR.
I don't get it. Why do people even like Twitter, old or new?
- Twitter used to be an absolutely great way to keep up with breaking news, because so many reporters were there. I joined twitter during the Arab Spring, because so much that was happening was being talked about on Twitter. Same with a lot of social movements - twitter was a place where you could make something local go global. If anything was happening in the world, twitter was the place to follow it.
  But now? Now, it’s a desert of information. It’s depressing to watch a place that was so vibrant become the home of Musk shills and weird right wingers. I loved Twitter, before Elon took over. Now, it’s fading, and fast.
- It was good place to keep up with artists and game developers. They share each other's work in a way that is great to discover more artists and games that you didn't know about.
  
  Grumpy gamer moved to mastadon so I gave it a crack. It's great. Lots of game devs there.
  
  Yep, before deleting my Twitter account after the muskrat invasion I used Twitter to keep up with the developers in my niche. As they usually have insights or I can get a sense on how the tech is going to progress by reading their updates.
- I could say this about most social media. Im on facebook just as a last ditch way for friends and family to reach me, linkedin for keeping contact with workmates, never saw a usecase for twitter but I see folks ones below.
- I don't think anyone liked it. More like tolerated it because of a combination of network effects and it being less shitty than Facebook.
  At least, that's why I was on Twitter. People I wanted to follow were there.

46 comments