Comment by shawnz
5 months ago
One possible counterargument is that bad actors could use the data to improve their spamming or astroturfing methods.
5 months ago
One possible counterargument is that bad actors could use the data to improve their spamming or astroturfing methods.
Security by obscurity?
Not exactly: in the security space, we have better tools available than obscurity. But in the spam/abuse prevention space, obscurity is the best you can do.
It's public data already.
But it's behind certain controls such as rate limits and other anti-abuse techniques, hence the researchers' difficulty, right?
They bought the place already.
If that is the case, having researchers perform analysis makes it possible to identify that risk and that is yet another reason to make sure that public data is not obscured.
In a way, this research would either prove or disprove your theory.
Counterargument it is, but its pretty weak considering benefits to free society
I agree that this seems like a net positive to me overall.
I mean ... have you been on X recently? The bad actors don't need any help.
I think Elon is still working hard to get rid of the bots, just like OJ spent years looking for the real killer.
He said he'd fix the bot problem. The bots were Elon shills and the problem was that Twitter kept removing them.