Thread: Search for Beijing/Shanghai/other cities in Chinese on Twitter and you'll mostly see ads for escorts/porn/gambling, drowning out legitimate search results.
Data analysis in this thread suggests that there has been a *significant* uptick in these spam tweets.
Data analysis in this thread suggests that there has been a *significant* uptick in these spam tweets.
I searched for 北京 (Beijing) today (11/28 ~5am Beijing time) and identified accounts with tweets that show up in the "Latest" search results.
Vast majority (>95%) of these are spam accounts. They tweet at a high, steady rate throughout the day, suggesting automation.
Vast majority (>95%) of these are spam accounts. They tweet at a high, steady rate throughout the day, suggesting automation.
Then I looked at the number of tweets by each account over time.
Interestingly, more than 70% of these spam accounts only started tweeting like crazy recently.
The rest (~top 90 in this plot) seem to have been spamming consistently for a while.
Interestingly, more than 70% of these spam accounts only started tweeting like crazy recently.
The rest (~top 90 in this plot) seem to have been spamming consistently for a while.
This is also true when I search for 上海 (Shanghai).
Note that these are just a small sample of the search results -- go and search 北京/上海 and you'll see new spam tweets come up every few seconds. So the number of spam accounts is way larger than a few hundred.
Note that these are just a small sample of the search results -- go and search 北京/上海 and you'll see new spam tweets come up every few seconds. So the number of spam accounts is way larger than a few hundred.
A technical point: the explosion of spam is not an artifact from sampling search results today.
When I look at the tweeting pattern of spam accounts that have tweeted earlier this week (instead of today), there is no steep increase. They likely reflect basal level of spamming.
When I look at the tweeting pattern of spam accounts that have tweeted earlier this week (instead of today), there is no steep increase. They likely reflect basal level of spamming.
This has been a quick and dirty analysis, feedback/questions highly welcome!
Data source —
Twitter search results: web search, “Latest” panel
# of tweets: Twitter API Tweet Counts
Twitter search results: web search, “Latest” panel
# of tweets: Twitter API Tweet Counts
Some important controls:
https://twitter.com/AirMovingDevice/status/1597070892021862400
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