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Eugen Rochko

It's a unique flavour of a problem but not a unique problem... How would you know if a centralized service's number were accurate? A large plot point of HBO's Silicon Valley was a startup artificially inflating their user numbers with fake activity to placate investors.

🤷‍♂️

11 May 2020 at 21:02 | Open on mastodon.social
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toby

@Gargron Facebook got busted reinterpreting "view" for videos. Meanwhile the entirety of news media had pivoted to that platform on the basis of shitty numbers, convinced it was the future.

When the reckoning came people got fired across the industry slate.com/technology/2018/10/f

11 May 2020 at 21:08 | Open on mastodon.social
Mike Flugennock

@Gargron All I know is that based on the number of blocks I've exercised and the number of no-bio, low follower, obviously fake accounts I've reported, Twitter's legitimate user numbers might easily be half of what they officially report.

11 May 2020 at 21:08 | Open on mastodon.art
The Doctor

@Gargron Lies, damn lies, and statistics.

11 May 2020 at 21:09 | Open on hackers.town
nicolyn

@Gargron as far as I can tell, this trustworthiness problem is exactly why the ad industry is so obsessed with tracking; if they don't have their own tracking code, then they have to trust the services' number, which they won't do if money is on the line

11 May 2020 at 21:11 | Open on kafuka.me
Neal Wilson ✅

@Gargron There are statistical methods dating back to World War 2 that can likely be applied. Mathematicians came up with much better estimates of things like tank production compared with spies trying to figure out the same thing.

11 May 2020 at 21:16 | Open on social.typica.us
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