Random spam and a train journey...

Kansas City, KS

Have you ever received a WhatsApp or a WeChat (WeiXin) message like, "Hello, I'm Stella, are you Mr. Jack, the costume designer introduced by Annie?" from someone with a Chinese woman as the profile picture but a US number?

My friends and I kept receiving those messages frequently. The template is always the same:

"Hello, I'm [a woman], are you [a man], [description to the man's job] introduced by [another woman / my colleague / my secretary]?"
A Google reverse image search on the profile picture will take you to the source - where they have stolen the image from.

For fun, we tried to reply to those to see where they would go. "Oh, sorry, you have messaged the wrong person." They respond, "my bad, at least you are kind enough." But these never proceeded further. They always sensed that I was trolling them and discontinued the chat almost immediately.

Train from Kansas City to ABQ

But managed to continue the chat a bit longer as I was on a long train trip. After this "wrong number," the person, who claimed to be a cloth designer from California, suggested I add to their Telegram since the WhatsApp is apparently for their work discussions only. So, I added them to their Telegram, a number from Indonesia. The person also introduced themself as a divorcee with a child and even shared a family photo (again, stolen from the Internet) after I shared a selfie from the train. They again shared the sketch of some cloth they designed and their lunch downloaded from the Internet. At this point, I can see how lazy these scammers are. They are not lazy. They just don't want to invest too much time on each potential victim as they cannot be bothered and have to function at large. Seriously, why can't they send an actual selfie of their lunch?

Anyway, in the beginning, they mentioned they also invest in crypto (they shared a selfie in front of a crypto dashboard - again taken from the Internet). At this point, I was sure this was either a crypto scam, romance scam, or a scam that would make me pay for their cloth design. This chat was dragging on over a couple of days as if they had formed a close and caring friendship with me. Usually, their conversation was in bad/broken English. But every time they talk about crypto, they get more professional and convincing - as if they were copy-pasting some paragraphs they wrote sometime back (not from the Internet. No text matches on the Internet). They even offered to help me invest. Ok, that is when I decided this was a crypto scam. My long train trip was coming to an end too. They also realized I wasn't falling for them - instead, I wasted their valuable scamming time. Their chat was getting repetitive with little time investment from them (just photos and videos stolen from the Internet). They stopped trying to convince me into crypto investments, and I blocked them.

Some arrests have been made on these crypto scams.

Pandemic Atlanta Lockdown - Week 21

Our Niffler abstract is accepted for oral presentation at CMIMI, a conference gone virtual. Now we are working on its full paper. Those are good news, especially when nothing else seems good - the pandemic, othering of foreigners and minorities, and disasters across the world.

The USA is considering a ban on the China-based social media platforms Wechat and Tiktok. Tiktok is a useless app. But the Wechat ban is going to be troublesome to those who have familial and business ties to China. We are already battling a horrible pandemic and governments acting all petty during this time. Internet censorship and othering, ostensibly presented as national security interests.

I am considering to innovate on the workweek as we are continuing to work from home. I will update once I have tried that.

Usually, my year goes fast once we reach August. Now, we are in August, and I feel 2021 is near. Although I am happy that this nasty year will come to an end soon, I fear that 2021 may be no better, as the pandemic continues to thrive.

Shots inspired by @Binkuwa. pic.twitter.com/Ahl5gKHJmd

— Pradeeban (@pradeeban) August 2, 2020

Super thalaivaaaaaaaa........ https://t.co/FuAXOmatzF pic.twitter.com/gzodNAac3W

— Pradeeban (@pradeeban) August 8, 2020

Twitter bots, trolls, fakes, parodies, and anonymous

Twitter indeed has numerous bots. But not every weird account that you encounter on Twitter is a bot. There is a clear difference among the bots, trolls, and fakes, though often the demarcation is vague.

First, a bot is not necessarily bad, though often bots are deployed with malicious intent, such as distributing propaganda and making viral content out of useless posts. Twitter bots are an economic model, with companies such as Devumi selling them to like, retweet, comment, and share your posts automatically for a price. 

 

I had two bots Llovizna and @on_my_way_home to tweet every time I post something to my blog. I stopped these accounts and their posts in 2016. I could have made these automated posts directly to my main Twitter account Pradeeban. In 2009, I chose to create proxy accounts to tweet my blog posts to keep my Twitter account under my entire control, with no automation.

People often confuse a bot with a fake account and an anonymous account. An anonymous account is usually genuine. It hides the real identity of the user but does not try to create an alter-ego or another personality for the human behind the user. An anonymous account may have 0 to 100% of identification information of the user. On the other hand, a fake account is intended to misrepresent someone. If I create an account with no information at all to post on sensitive topics, that is an anonymous account. On the other hand, if I pretend to be a princess from Sweden in my Twitter profile, that is a fake account. 

Some fake accounts acknowledge they are fake, and often function with a touch of humor, faking the identity of a known person, such as politicians, leaders, and actors. They are parodies, as long as they acknowledge this in their profile, so as not to mislead an unsuspecting follower.

A bot account is still a complete account. By logging into the account, a human still can post tweets as in a regular account. However, usually interacting with a bot account is fruitless.

Trolls can be a regular account, though more often than not they are fakes, parodies, or anonymous accounts, as the repercussions of being a troll are imminent in the current sensitive world. It is often advised not to involve the trolls, as the more you interact with someone over the Twitter in their timeline, more visibility they get.

I have seen arguments on Twitter, where a verified user or a user with several followers discrediting the other party by their number of followers. "She got only 50 followers. She must be a bot" or "He got only 30 followers. He must be fake". These arguments are flawed for several reasons. First, if someone is making an intelligent communication, it is (still) not possible to be a bot. Second, you cannot judge a person fake by their number of followers. The person can just be someone who is busy with their real life than harvesting Twitter followers in a shady practice followed by many popular and verified accounts (more on this in my previous post, Twitter is inherently flawed and unfair - and "Influencers" are ruining it).

I also noticed that those who use the "number of followers" as a measure to judge the validity of someone's tweets are the ones that pay for fake/bot followers, or use the shady practice of "follow and unfollow after a follow back" used by accounts such as @cammipham and @IAmJeffEmmerson. 

Twitter bots are not necessarily bad. They do some specific useful tasks, such as creating news syndicates and reporting weather alerts. Therefore, disabling the potential for bots is not a good idea. However, it may be a good middle ground if Twitter makes it mandatory for the bot creators to explicitly identify and acknowledge them as bots and offer to identify information to the creator. Such restrictions are already in place for parody accounts - you must self-identify your account as a parody if you are impersonating someone (usually a famous person). Otherwise, your account may be terminated by Twitter. We need similar measures to bots to ensure ethical use of bots.

Fake accounts can be entirely fictitious or imitate a real living person to some degree such as using someone else's identity or photo. Fake accounts are often harmful and are malicious in intent (for example, consider someone faking as a minor/child, or someone faking as a racial or sexual minority to make a political statement). They need to be controlled too. Twitter needs to improve a lot. Their workflow is flawed. Their verification program is broken and harmful. I still appreciate the simplicity of Twitter, despite its shortcomings. It is always an excellent platform to share your thoughts publicly, even if no one is listening.

Twitter is inherently flawed and unfair - and "Influencers" are ruining it

Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook are a few of the social media platforms that are frequented by the "Influencers." LinkedIn and Facebook have a more balanced approach than Twitter and Instagram. I am not a user of Instagram. So I will limit my focus to Twitter now.

Twitter is very light-weight. Anyone can join, in several capacities. This lead to companies such as Devumi selling fake followers - followers created with the help of bot applications in a significant amount.

Twitter, knowingly or unknowingly, has created a class hierarchy with its verification program. Any journalist, a public-facing person, an author, or an "influencer" can become verified, proving a significance or importance. All these definitions fall into a million shades of gray. 

Twitter intentionally has kept its platform with minimalist features. For example, you do not even know who unfollows. This is similar to Facebook. However, Facebook unfriend is different as it is two-way. When someone unfriends you, they also lose you. This is not the case for Twitter. You would not believe how many verified Twitter users with blue/white ticks follow you, and later unfollow you once you have followed them back. Many of us have blogged about this before. There are tools such as Fanbase that automates this ill practice, making it even easier.

For example -  see this amazing post by Matt Navarra: Twitter is being spoiled by one type of user. 

Consider a case you receive a follow from two of these Twitter users:

User A with "10 following and 20 followers."

User B with "5,000 following and 1.25 Million followers."

Who would you follow back?

If you are an innocent Twitter user such as the below kid, you will follow back the user B. After all, B has 1.25 Million followers, and he has chosen to follow you first. Such a humble person!

Fig 1. The innocent kid was followed by an "influencer" author with fame and money in his mind.

But you know what? He/she would unfollow you within a period (anywhere between a week, to a few months), once you have followed them back. Of course, they would unfollow you even if you did not follow them back - but that is fairer relatively.

This is more of a numbers game - the same play by the pickup artists (PUA). Follow 1000 users every day. 100 will follow back. Repeat. At some point, you will have anywhere around 10,000 - 1 million followers. Now you can continue your following game. But at the same, keep unfollowing at intervals. As you reach thousands of followers, the naive users will follow you back more when you follow them first. No one really notices that you unfollowed anyway.

Unfortunately, Twitter does not alert the unsuspecting Twitter user when someone unfollows. Of course, there are applications such as Tweepmaps. But not many are aware of it. Even those who are aware of it, do not know the economics behind this numbers game.

Jeff Emmerson, followed me when he had just 5000 followers. He continued his follow-and-unfollow loop to harvest 1.25 million followers, while "following" only a few thousands at any time. In Figure 1, he followed the kid first. The kid followed him back. But as usual, our Jeff Emmerson unfollowed the kid later.

Fig 2. How to become an "Influencer."

Anyone would question me. Why does this matter? Am I looking into a silly thing? Who cares - who follows me and unfollows me? Right? Wrong.

This is a power play and economics. Someone such as Jeff Emmerson who authored a book needs to show that he is indeed an influencer. When he followed me and around 9 of my connections, we followed him back since he looked genuine. But he was just promoting his upcoming book (probably his biography with some fiction. Did not read it). Then he also started to promote other brands. Each such promotional tweets with 1 million followers can be as expensive as 2,000 - 20,000 Euro! This is real money. You are just a number in this pool.

Fig 3. One of the advertisements, among many, for the same brand.

When I politely questioned Jeff Emmerson on this, all he did was just blocking me. Interestingly, I found at least another user having experienced the same!

Fig 4. Blocked by someone claiming to be a "mental health advocate!"

It is plain wrong. Someone claiming to be a mental health champion follows people with interest in mental health. Those posts on Twitter on tags such as #depression #mental #health #adhd #bipolar. Then unfollows them after they follow back. Very helpful, dear verified influencing best-selling author!

Well. To be fair, Jeff is not the only "influencer" that follow this pathetic Twitter loop. I found many. .@JetsetterDiary did the same thing and blocked me when I found this.

CamMi Pham (@cammipham) is another interesting case. She followed me. I followed her back. She unfollowed me in a day or two! I unfollowed her back. She followed me back in a month or so. (It is hard to forget these people with the same profile picture and verification). :) Giving the benefit of doubt, I followed her back. She unfollowed me again within a week or so. I unfollowed her again, confirming that she indeed is a Twitter parasite. Guess what? She followed me again after some time. I did not follow-back. She unfollowed soon after. She did not follow me again yet. :P Interestingly, the Twitter community has indeed noticed her tactics - and a hashtag #Cammispam has appeared to call her out on this shady practice.

Fig 5. CamMi Pham, the one who spams you with frequent follow-unfollow

As you see above, I am not the only one spammed by CamMi Pham's frequent follow-and-unfollow loops. :D

Fig 6. Some replies to CamMiPham

As you can see above in the replies, you can see some identifying her tactics of "bait and switch" or "follow to unfollow." However, Twitter hides these negative replies under "More replies" tag where they show up only if you click, once the profile owner (i.e., CamMiPham) hides them. So this works in favor of the owner of the profile.

Some other individuals following this shady practice are listed below. There are many. I did not trace everyone:

@chris_meares,

@TheFinalGallery,

@NadiaShapiro,

@johnhall

@Polycor is not really an "influencer" per se. but a company with the same shady practice.

Twitter is taking notice of fake accounts and trying to shut them down. However, it does not seem to take any action against those who use the bots or manual malpractices to increase their follower count unethically. Even Twitter accounts such as Amitabh Bachchan, the most popular Bollywood actor, care about their follower count! :D

Fig 7. The Bollywood Veteran is not so happy about the loss of followers.

I asked myself, why would someone need to unfollow. Why can't they just follow people and keep following those accounts? At least, keep following the accounts that followed you back. Isn't that more ethical? After all, they did not know you before YOU followed them first. I found the answer from CamMi Pham's promotional webinar material.

Fig 8. The secret sauce of becoming an "influencer."

"Twitter followers:  963K.  Instagram followers:  66.5K.  That merely touches the iceberg of CamMI Pham’s global fan base.  How did she do it?  Join us Wednesday, February 7 from 11:00 a.m. Central time until 12:00 p.m. (noon) Central Time and listen to CamMI talk about “Dare to Be Bold!"

This is her business. She lives out of this. It is essential to show that she has a million followers - as in an idol.
Madonna has 2 million followers when she follows less than 50 accounts. Everyone knows and adores Madonna. But is that the case with these unknown "influencers"? These unknown influencers also want to be Madonna. So they must unfollow, even those accounts they followed first. It is also like the restaurants in the touristic area. It is a known scam. In some places, they populate the shop with their friends to look popular. Once you look popular, more crowd will follow. "Fake it till you make it," they say.

Regardless of several complaints, Twitter does not seem to improve at all. Just the way fake reviews ruin websites such as TripAdvisor, these influencers continue to ruin Twitter for everyone. I might consider leaving Twitter. But it still remains as the ideal platform to complain about a company or a politician. So for now, we have to live with Twitter, though it sucks. I am of course tracking these "influencers" in Twitter itself.

I am going to tag every "influencer" that follows me, and unfollows me within a week after I followed them back, into this thread. ;)

— Pradeeban (@pradeeban) August 8, 2017

In summary, next time if a "popular" user follows you out of nowhere, remember that they are just adding you to their affiliate marketing pool. No need to follow them back unless you know them already, or if you think their tweets are valuable to you.

Failure of Twitter Symmetry

The dark side of Twitter

There are at least 3 types of Twitter users: 1) Those who follow accounts that share some specific tweets (the followers), 2) Those who connect with people to interact as in any other social media (the friends), and 3) Those who are or want to be the news streams (the leaders). There are also Twitter parasites, an ever-growing population, who does a mass-following and every day perform a mass-unfollowing. In this procedure, they would have accumulated a million followers while just following a few thousand. These Twitter parasites feed on the human psychology - when a "star user" follows you, you tend to follow them back. They play a numbers game to trick people to follow-back, and to unfollow just after someone followed them back. I have been followed by many such verified Twitter star users to unfollow me only after a few weeks since I followed them back. 

I use Twitter for friendship. To share and interact with interesting people. I am not on Twitter to follow visionaries. There are also another set of Twitter users who start like me (under the category 2 above), and then during some specific time decide to be like the category 1 or 3. They then perform a mass-unfollow. Now you end up following their random musings - one way.

I suggest Twitter have an automated workflow - when someone who followed you first decides to unfollow you, automatically unfollow them back. This will stop the Twitter parasites and those who suddenly waken up just before the new year to follow only the "worthy accounts". My suggestion for the Twitter parasites - there is no real reward to unfollow those who fell into your trap and followed back. Isn't it more important to keep the communication than just having a large number of passive followers?

How to end up in everyone's spam folder

Many companies are apparently under the belief that they may purchase email addresses in bulk from those who cultivate a lot of addresses to resell (this may include your electricity company or insurance company). This is how I am signed up into weird mailing list without my consent. I have to each time manually sign out of each of these weird marketing lists. Every time I unsubscribe from these spam, I make sure to report it as Spam in Gmail filters. The Gmail God will eventually make sure to send email from these senders directly to spam folder, if everyone follows what I do. Please, if I want, I will subscribe myself to your email list. It was never helpful that you do this on behalf of me, without even asking me. 

Worse, many of these spammers do not even have an easy option to unsubscribe. The ideal example is Roomster. A scam room-sharing company which creates fake profiles with beautiful profile pictures, and then send you an email asking to share the room with you. The girl who wants to share her room with you may not even live in your continent. To reply (and in some cases, even to view) these messages, you need to pay some money (as high as 3 - 5$) or go for an even higher monthly subscription. Funny part is, if you want to unsubscribe from the mailing list of this scam company Roomster, first you need to log in to your Facebook and open your Roomster account (it will auto-create if it does not exist yet), to unsubscribe from the emails or to delete your account. It was so complex that I did not unsubscribe for a few months despite loothing this scam/spam web site. 

Remember kids, there are many reports that once they get hold of your credit card, they will charge you for 3 months or so, without you even asking. Stay away from Roomster. Thank me later.

TripAdvisor: How fake reviews can ruin your travel diaries..

There are many fake reviews in TripAdvisor. It is easy to spot one that harvests fake reviews. They are usually reviewers just have reviewed only the current one with a 5*. This is not to say that all the once-only reviewers are fake. But if a place is reviewed all 5* by these newbies, that should ring a bell. Moreover, I have seen in freelancing sites "employers" asking for 100s of reviews in sites such as TripAdvisor for a hundred dollars! It can also be friends filling TripAdvisor reviews for a restaurant owner, or even the restaurant employees creating multiple fake accounts to accumulate 5* ratings. 

It can also be social engineering. When I stayed in New Delhi in 2012, the hotel owner asked me to rate them 5* in TripAdvisor. That was my first review! I guess a normal person would have given 5*. Does not hurt. right? But I gave 4*, the rating I thought the hotel deserves (than what the owner hinted)! Would be easier to manipulate one's rating with some benefit (like a discounted rate) though. I am not going to give fake 5* ratings for free stuff though. :) I hope.

Always check the 1* ratings. They may show how the place mistreats the visitors. Also 4* ratings. They tend to be the genuine happy customers. Fake reviewers always give 5*. Not 4*. No one pays to give 4* ratings! Similarly, 2* ratings tend to be more rational than 1* too, unless the restaurant is really fishy and unpleasant.

I sent a detailed report to TripAdvisor content-integrity sometime back on a sample situation. Their response was along the lines of "At the same time, we have privacy policies in place which prevent us from being able to divulge to anyone external to TripAdvisor the results of any investigations."

Apart from being Nepal restaurants in Europe, what is the other similarity shared by "Sushi King, Wijnegem", "Sushi King, Malle", "Leo, Lisbon, Portugal", and "Fishtail, Lisbon, Portugal"? They all have been reviewed by the same set of early reviewers who gave 5* reviews with extra-ordinary positive reviews. These reviewers also created their accounts just to review these restaurants!

The first 2 restaurants are in Belgium and as their name suggests, are owned by a same chain. The last 2 are in Portugal, and owned by an individual (see the attachment for proof, taken from TripAdvisor). There are many accounts that were created to review 2 or 3 among these or just 1 of these restaurants! Some of these reviewers have reviewed 1 or 2 of these restaurants more than once! (5-star each time).

I have attached two reviewers with this association for these 4 restaurants. There are many. Just go through each of these restaurants and click the 5-* ratings. You can see reviewers created solely to review one or a few of these 4 restaurants. All these reviewers are Nepalese or Indian.
 

One can do an association rule mining across all these profiles and get more associations to show how these reviewers are having a strong correlation with each of these. These 4 may be more than 4. I mean, if you find a 5th association, try to build a cluster to see whether they share the same pattern. I am just a volunteer TripAdvisor member. I gave up after finding 4.

1. It is highly unlikely that a large share of reviewers visited all 4 of these restaurants in 2 different countries, and created their accounts to review only these 4!
2. I suspect they have some incentives.
2.1. I have previously seen random employers in freelancer websites seeking freelancers to bulk review their pages in Facebook, TripAdvisor, etc..
2.2. They are probably friends of the owner. In case of Leo, it is currently #1 in Lisboa with just 136 reviews. These reviews can be from bots. Even if they are from real humans, it is not hard to find 136 "friends" for an Indian/Nepalese restaurant owner in Portugal.
3. Given that Leo is the #1 in Lisboa now, unsuspecting tourists visit there since it is a "must" now, as listed #1 by TripAdvisor. Some of them are satisfied naturally. The food is not bad - and deserve 3* - 4* anyway. So they leave a positive review. Some were a bit disappointed learning this is just yet another Indian restaurant. However, the initial bootstrap from the fake reviewers were strong enough for Leo.

As a continuous volunteer reviewer in TripAdvisor, I am disappointed to learn that TripAdvisor's approval workflow is not smart yet.

1) The ranking algorithm should be changed to
1.1) ensure a meritocracy than a democracy. In the Internet, each account is not necessarily a human. So democracy in such systems is flawed. Currently, there is no difference getting 100 5* reviews from fake accounts or bots and 100, real reviewers with proven track record.
1.2) give more importance to the number of reviews. 1000 4* reviews are probably better than 4.5* rating with 137 reviews. This should of course not harm the new businesses. So needs a smart approach. Requires further research. Currently this is the loophole how Leo managed to become the first in Lisboa!
2) The approval workflow should consist of a data mining approach to ensure reviews are not creating a pattern. As of now, I was able to find a pattern very easily among these companies. With a large set of engineers and the management interface/API, this should be simple for TripAdvisor team.
3) Fix the reporting system. Currently it is a bot. First, I report, and a canned response asked me to send an email to this address. I am not even sure whether this will be considered properly.

Leo coming to the top spot reminds me the story - http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/tripadvisor-denies-rating-system-is-flawed-after-fake-restaurant-tops-rankings-in-italy-10354818.html

The difference is Leo actually exists as a normal Indian/Nepalese restaurant. But there are much better Nepal or Indian restaurants around, and this surely is not the #1 of Lisboa.

These first 100 reviews were given by fake reviewers to give an initial bootstrap to secure the first place, and following were social engineering. The tourists who blindly follow TripAdvisor and pay a visit here assuming this to be the best of Lisboa. Following this huge popularity, this small canteen restaurant is even unable to cope with the number of customers, making the waiting time grow large. Unsuspecting customers take all these positively. Some even fell for the mediocre Indian food, which can also be found in any other Indian/Nepal/Bengal restaurant around.

A Dirty way to the Social Media Stardom

Twitter has somehow created a class hierarchy with its verified accounts. Anyone can receive a "blue tick" as long as they have met a certain criteria. Doesn't it sound fancy to have 10K followers when you just follow no one except the God? That is what these unethical/fake Twitter stars are doing by exploiting a flow in Twitter's workflow.

First, you will receive a follow from a star/verified account from some motivational speaker, influencer, marketer, leader, or a king of jungle jiggy bamboo. You follow them back because you are a nice person who follow everyone else back (probably with an exception of obvious bots), or because you feel happy to be followed by a "star-Tweep".

One week passes by. By this time, the star-Tweep would have unfollowed you already. You would not notice, as Twitter does not inform or alert you on unfollowers. On the other hand, the star-Tweep, this is how he/she became the star in the first place. You will still receive their noise in your time line. This is scam also common in YouTube. Not possible in Facebook or LinkedIn, as there the connection option is two-way, unlike the Twitter and YouTube follow. It might be the case with Google+ too. But I never used it long enough to know its tricks. I am not sure about other social media (such as Instagram), as I am not a user.

I use TweepsMap these days to find these culprits. Trust me, every week I have around 5 of these guys. Those with "10 K followers and 5 K following", following me first only to unfollow me within a week after I followed them back.

The last offender was someone (a company, judging from their handle) with "Following: 4,975, Followers: 7.8K", who followed me first to unfollow me within a week after I followed back.

Bye for now, Twitter. You used to be a way to announce "eating salad now", and you have grown up to be a mass weapon for marketing, politics, and all the similar things.

Atlanta Finishing Touches and the Return to Portugal

Finally, the day came to return to Portugal. As expected, we were left with a considerable amount of stuff to be thrown away or left behind (?) in Atlanta. We attempted to sell a few. We have two Facebook selling groups in Atlanta - one private to Emory University students and staff. Interestingly many of our stuff created a large interest, and some were even bought by the students promptly.

However, one troll group, belonging to an Emory University fraternity decided to troll on my posts.

It was 4 guys named Max, Alex, Zach, and Kyle trolling together. Apparently I have no time to deal with Facebook trolls. I was in Facebook for very short time to sell the stuff and deactivate the account again. Interestingly, the trolls all share the profile pictures - appearing in each others' profile picture. The group did not have a group administrator, or the administrator is unable to or unwilling to reprimand the trolls. 

The Internet troll and bully culture is very dangerous. I have read in news that similar fraternity groups in the US trolling new students, particularly the female students. In extreme cases, online bullying has lead to suicides. These trolls, invite their victims to "just kill themselves".

Troll towards me is harmless, except the fact that my 'business' failed. :P The trolls belonging to the Emory University's Kappa Sigma #20 fraternity (as retrieved from their Facebook profiles) did not get anything out of this except some childish pleasure.

Luckily, we found a church that accepts the free stuff from neighbourhoods. It was win-win. We did a charity, and felt better. Received the blessings of the church. On the other hand, we indeed wasted a lot of time waiting for those who confirmed to buy the stuff. The students cancelled at the last moment (literally), after confirmed to buy, and we waited for them for the whole day to arrive.

We still had some decent students who indeed came and bought the stuff as discussed. This was my first experience as a seller, and I learned a lot. It was my first time being trolled online too. 

Now I am back to Portugal - my familiar lands with more familiar faces and no trolls around. Summer in Portugal was gone when I am back though. Already cold and rainy. Autumn is here, as I resumed my work at INESC-ID Lisboa.

Proxy humans - The worst kind of social media users!

A useless image disguised as a "helpful resource"

Something I dislike about many social media users - specifically when they do that on LinkedIn - sharing content with no way to trace back to the origin. Some users are just plain novice and they do so without knowing the ways to propagate the information in the right way. For example, see the viral image on the left hand side. It was shared by millions of such novice users. But who creates these images? Are they social media novices too? No, they surely are not. These are social media crocodiles who create these "information" just for the sake of getting more visibility. If you were fortunate/unfortunate to witness this image, you would have noticed that there was no caption or pointers to where to find the MIT's online course material. Of course, a quick Google search would reveal that. But the intention here is not to help (as it seems); rather to make this particular image itself popular/viral.

The worse offenders are those who copy-paste others' content without giving the credit or link to the original post. Some would argue that they are sharing knowledge here. Some might really be unaware of the "Share" mechanisms present in all the social media. However, most are deliberately plagiarizing. They function as a proxy human between the knowledge source and the public, preventing access to the source of information, by functioning as a proxy in the middle. 

Next time, when you spot a proxy human in social media, please do not engage with them much under their post. The more their post get engaged, higher the possibilities that it will eclipse the origin.

The rise and the fall of a Facebook star

1. The Hi5 Era
It was early 2006, if I remember correctly. Hi5 was getting popular. It was a social media where each new member is encouraged to invite 5 of their friends to the platform. My friend asked me why did not I accept his invitation. I told him that I had an email account (Yahoo!), which for now was enough for me. He tried his best to convince me that Hi5 was good for sharing photos and chatting. He still failed. I did not even have a digital camera till early 2007 to share the photos. I told him that I would rather email the friends I care about, instead of joining another random platform.

2. Dawn of the Facebook

Later that year, I would join the engineering faculty, and in mid 2007 I joined the department of computer science and engineering as an undergraduate. New social media platforms were getting popular. Everyone had started talking about Facebook. At some point, a clear majority among the 100 of us in the batch had joined Facebook. I was not among them, despite having received an invite from one of my good friends. My reasoning was still valid - I had a very active Gmail account which I used for sharing photos and sharing emails (including cute pictures of cats and jokes, as well as the emails to project mailing lists and class email groups dedicated entirely for friendship and fun).

3. The Entry

In 2008, a lecturer who was teaching us Software Engineering finally managed to get me into Facebook. He asked us to create a Facebook group for his course, where he would initiate group discussions based on the lecture sessions we had. I was not impressed in the beginning by this idea. However, I eventually started to become active in Facebook by the mid of 2008. It felt great when I was able to connect to the friends from different continents. My school friends were distributed across the globe, and receiving messages and updates from them was so encouraging. Apart from the friends I already knew, I also got to know new friends from Facebook itself through mutual friends, and some online communities. My Facebook account was entirely dedicated for fun and friendship by that time.

4. Intern Diaries

I joined WSO2 as an intern in September 2008. The company encouraged everyone to be active in social media, and motivated us to collaborate and communicate in social media, spreading the word about what we do as a team. By early 2009, I had a Facebook account that also contained technology related posts in addition to that of a regular undergraduate that just had funny posts and photos. I even had friend requests from a few customers of the company. My Facebook friend list had grown above 1500 by that time, spreading across the globe. By that time, I knew that my Facebook account was a reasonably valuable asset to me, and losing it or deactivating it was never an option.

5. Professional Gangster

Around the end of 2009, I had become a professional Facebooker. I was aware of the scams of Facebook. I also knew which were the dodgy links and how viral posts were born. I never clicked or shared anything that had a hidden agenda. I carefully avoided politics. My Facebook was still in its golden era. There were even random people asking me questions through Facebook about some of the technology posts I made. As I completed my second Google Summer of Code in 2010, my Facebook had more content intense in technology with links and often content I wrote by myself. I also joined WSO2 as a software engineer later that year.

6. Social Media Pro (alias shameless promoter)

In the latter half of 2011, I was leading the social media engagement of the company and had shared massive amount of promotional material. Later in 2012, I quit my job to continue my higher studies in Europe. I eventually became a frequent traveller, and shared many of my travel stories and photos online, in Facebook, Twitter, and Blogger. Facebook became even more important to me, as I used it to connect to my friends back in Sri Lanka. It also helped me get news updates. I basically was logged in Facebook always. Never logged out.

7. Maturity

My Facebook started to age, along with me. :P As we grow older, it also reflects in the social media. The number of fun posts started to decline while more promotional content from companies and photos of babies started to appear more frequently. When I went to China in 2014, I made sure to install and configure the relevant proxy and VPN solutions so that I would not miss the updates when I was away, since Facebook was otherwise inaccessible from China.

8. Facebook Wars

By 2015, I knew how "visionaries" or "thought leaders" and "idols" from Sri Lanka and other countries would manipulate their follower base to get their views across. It was easy for them to sensationalize their view points than merely stating the facts. Sometimes it got annoying to see how a large base of followers fall for trivial tricks and scams. It was easy for the visionaries to provoke an unsuspecting victim for their hidden agenda. Politics - I tried my best to avoid - was not always easy to omit. I had to engage in multiple occasions, when it appeared in my feed. I started to give my voice for whatever I felt was right.

9. Getting Intense

There were some failed politicians in Sri Lanka (as well as globally) starting to use social media to spread racism in order to regain the grounds. They did not have a really huge follower base. But they did have support from some "social media stars" and "thought leaders". Racism - I loathe in any of its forms. I tried my best to voice against the online bullies and racists, without sensationalizing the view points. In my observation, the IQ or EQ of average Facebook population was very minimal. Though I had a very intelligent LinkedIn, lately I noticed that this had started to happen to my LinkedIn as well. I unfollowed bulks of people who shared irrelevant content on Facebook and LinkedIn. 

10. LinkedIn as another Facebook

I wanted my LinkedIn account to contain professional and educational material. Though not many of my contacts did that, still some irrelevant posts from the 2nd level connections ("connections of connections" or "friends or friends", though I do not usually call LinkedIn connections as "friends", unlike Facebook). Those who solve simple mathematical equations (even with the claim that only  geniuses can solve them), those who claim how a few thousands likes will help them feel happy, help them quit smoking, or even help them recover from cancer, those fake recruiters who would ask you to like or post "interested" in their post so that they can review your profile, those who posts their random cute photos, those who seek prayers in LinkedIn for themselves or their far relatives, and also those who posts photos dictating LinkedIn ≠ Facebook (quite ironically), all I had to unfollow - those who posted them, or those who interact with these posts by commenting or liking. Even if you comment "Please do not post this", it appears on your followers' feed. So somehow I managed to keep my LinkedIn clean.

11. Unfollow Marathon

However, things were different in Facebook. I did like to get updates - random updates - from Facebook. I liked political posts - but not the way they appear sensationalized. I unfollowed around 500 racists and those who simply posted spam during my almost decade long stay in Facebook. However, racists and Facebook thought leaders managed to spread their view by commenting on others' profiles. Same story with those who posted annoying posts. I realized I was spending more time managing Facebook, which was not effective and worse - counter-productive. The social media is made in a way that it promotes viral content, regardless of its lack of quality.

12. Demise of a Facebook Star
One of my close friends had deactivated his Facebook, citing similar reasons. I decided to finally deactivate my Facebook account. After 5.5 years, I did not fail to notice that the Facebook deactivate and permanent delete options remain the same, with no change in display or user experience, regardless of tens of major reformations of Facebook itself.

13. Final Good bye

I re-assigned the ownership of the Facebook groups I had created to those I trusted as suitable candidates. I also sent my contact details to my Facebook friends, who would lose contact with me otherwise. By mid-December, I deactivated my account, and kept it deactivated for 2 months successfully, without ever feeling the need to go back. I did re-activate it once in a while to send some quick messages, as required. However, I was simply able to break the habit of social media. I rather increased my updates to my blog and twitter. If in the future, a better social media platform appears, I will give it one more try. 

14. The End

This marks the end of my 8 year long Facebook life - the rise and the fall of my Facebook kingdom. :P My friend who initially deactivated his account had it reactivated though. However, looking back, I felt like I had traveled in a circle. I feel like I have come back to the period of 2006, after 10 years. I do not really feel I am missing something by not having an account in the most popular social media platform of the world. It is not to boost that I am saving more time or have become more productive. We always find ways to waste some of our time in the Internet, regardless of the existence of Facebook. Just I find that my time with Facebook has come to an end. I will continue writing in the other platforms, such as this blog and my Twitter account.

ShareLatex - Life of a PhD Researcher..

Seriously. I am addicted to sharelatex.com. YouTube comes second (overtaking Facebook, since my deactivate last year). I even noticed when the ShareLatex servers went down for maintenance, which is not something that happens frequently.

Emergency Maintenance at ShareLatex

Moments with Twitter - IV

It has been a while since I wrote a post on the series of Moments with Twitter. You may find the previous 3 posts by checking out my blog label,

• Memories of 2015. Short-Term Scientific Mission in Croatia! https://t.co/b3OzjGJQK3 Dec 25, 2015

A short term COST action in Croatia. Very remarkable! This gives the entire list of successful STSMs under the same European Project.

• ~~ Election results of the @Erasmus_Mundus PR election for 2016 https://t.co/wXhF2cUYqc Best wishes to all the EMA Program Representatives! Dec 25, 2015

I am going to be a PR once more. Previously I hold the post for EMDC in 2013.

• Date Ariane, an interesting "dating simulator" game that has become a YouTube sensation. https://t.co/bZVVFSodx0 Works also in Linux #NSFW Dec 23, 2015

This application is interesting to try once or twice. Irrespective of going viral in YouTube, this game/simulator/application is so depressing. It does not give you much controls, except going on a predefined set of actions in a loop, often random. The "date" in the game itself is more complicated and unfair than the real life scenarios. You may try for fun. If you take it too serious, you will be left irritated.

• Like to Study Abroad? Tips for successful #Erasmus #Mundus applications: https://t.co/P4t5yPkgcM https://t.co/Xp24AAgJN0 @Erasmus_Mundus Dec 22, 2015

Erasmus Mundus is surely one of the best things happened to me so far. Actually not one. It is two, as I have been awarded two Erasmus Mundus grants so far - one for masters, and the other (the current one) for doctorate.

• ~~ Today I presented my work at FCUL. This was also my first guest talk in a university outside Sri Lanka. https://t.co/HJK5isoSTw Nov 20, 2015

I surely love meeting new people, specially the smart ones.

• The satisfaction you get, when your paper's title has unicode characters that make the editor's job more interesting. :P #∂u∂u -> ?u?u Sep 29, 2015

That tweet was a bit sarcastic. Not sure whether that was a good idea to include Unicode characters in my paper. However, happy about the outcome.

• #Facebook was down, and now it is apparently back. Reporting real time from #Portugal. :P Sep 28, 2015

Social media has its adverse efforts on the users. I like social media for the network I have built, more than the features it has to offer. I am not actually addicted to any of the sites though. I never check them when I am out. I like to post some interesting updates. However, this year the remarkable events increased significantly, which made me fail to update social media networks altogether. 

• Thanks @OpenDaylightSDN for reminding me the periodic table again. Hydrogen, Helium, Beryllium, Boron, and more.. :D Jul 30, 2015

Effects of actively participating in the Beryllium release.

• Listening to the @OpenDaylightSDN VPN Service presentation, while reading on Quagga Routing Suite integration (http://t.co/2FH0spj3wy ). Jul 30, 2015

Updates, real time from the OpenDaylight Summit 2015.

• Cisco Sandbox Labs - https://t.co/BwsPQZkRst As discussed in @OpenDaylightSDN Summit. Jul 29, 2015

More updates from the summit. I really loved the summit that I did not go out on sight seeing at all, as I did not want to miss any of the sessions. Also since I was in a tight schedule, I could not extend my stay before or after the summit.

• Useful #Yang Tools - https://t.co/35TgH7cse9 http://t.co/iaX6X7aty4 http://t.co/i4PYgsZVvi https://t.co/alxe8sP5L9 http://t.co/6UCBSENQkI Jul 29, 2015

• #Unix history repo - Commits on Jun 20, 1972: https://t.co/HY9iem7IUp May 24, 2015

Seems pretty interesting to dig the history.

• Find your airport - http://t.co/NrqXV50x25 Mar 30, 2015

At some point in this year, I really felt  Lisboa airport was like my second home.

• #MEOCloud, a good alternative to #Dropbox. It gives 16 GB free space, and also has a Dropbox-like referral system. https://t.co/KOAmagkAlB Mar 28, 2015

May be because of its Portuguese interface; it is not that popular. Probably it is intentional as they want to limit their user base to inside Portugal.

• So, I am forced to move majority of my documents away from @Dropbox . http://t.co/8D9UYyA4lL Feb 05, 2015

This year, in fact, Dropbox introduced the Campus Space Race again for 2 more years. Predictably, this year the universities (at least the ones that I am affiliated with) underperformed compared to the previous, the first time they introduced this. Probably, just like me, many others got annoyed with the migration requirements at the end of two years. In 2013 race, my university was able to secure 25 GB out of the 25 GB maximum advertised. This time, it was just 15 GB.

• World, by population. Sri Lanka - we are not that small.. http://t.co/l6fYJj8FJm Feb 03, 2015

I love maps and data.

• I never get any message in #Twitter #Messages #Inbox. Whenever I get one, it is always a spam message. Dec 28, 2014

 Except when I initiate the communication myself. This is not even an exaggeration, though it sounds like one.

• ~~ If you want to get a #Chinese name -- http://t.co/akjgKhiFFt Dec 26, 2014

Some fun stuff.

• Tutorials? http://t.co/kKG40ynJ7r seems pretty decent.. Dec 21, 2014

The Internet offers an unlimited amount of learning resources.

• A guide to sleeping in the airports - http://t.co/unTcJgB5IJ This comes handy in deciding the transits.. Sep 14, 2014

I am not really good at sleeping in the airports. I often stare at the small "vehicles" that move the elderly or differently-abled, or the ones that clean the airports in the nights. Often I just go into a long train of thoughts.

• Found that it is a spam company called @AdCeylon is who spamming me using @madmimi. Created a filter to delete all the mails from adceylon. Aug 08, 2014

That was a heavy spamming that time. Like a few mails a day, directed to my inbox, short-circuiting many of my unsubscribe and filter attempts.

• I scored 26012 points at 2048, a game where you join numbers to score high! #2048game http://t.co/vcQmTxIDr8 via @gabrielecirulli Jul 10, 2014

Another way how I spend time in the airports during the long transits, specially the ones that come in the nights where the shops in the air-side are often closed. I have a love-hate relationship with the airports. Often loving it for holding strong memories and nostalgia, while hating for the long wait specially for check in and other procedures.

• Online #JavaScript code quality tool.. http://t.co/oHF3mT0LgR Jun 20, 2014

• Get credit card numbers.. http://t.co/OkwY2p2vWJ May 11, 2014

This is to combat scammers.

• What kind of Web do you want? https://t.co/Sb7g7t0E2X Apr 29, 2014

Mozilla's yearly effort.

• Read #Tipitaka online. Collection of Pali language texts which form the doctrinal foundation of #Theravada #Buddhism. http://t.co/3NZsMEtfYh Apr 12, 2014

• Download the free #school text books provided by #Sri #Lanka government from http://t.co/oJdhfnZHFg for grade 1 to grade 11. So convenient. Jan 17, 2014

Memories. Old memories. (Should I say, young memories?)

• China's first moon rover lands — and rolls onto lunar surface - http://t.co/XrEW93ra8f After almost four decades. First time in my lifetime. Dec 14, 2013

Must have been a cool feeling when the man landed on the moon for the first time a few decades ago. Not much new exciting breakthroughs recently, compared to that. I would consider a Mars landing equally ground-breaking. Nothing else.

• ~~ This guy is the hero! ~~ https://t.co/iAQKFv8OD4. Dec 10, 2013

I tweeted this long ago. Have to re-read now, as I have forgotten what was this about. After a few minutes of scanning the page again, I still hold the respect for this hero, after 2 years.

• ~~ Someone is trying to reset my #twitter password. Considering I am a harmless and no-politics person, that is really funny.. :D Dec 06, 2013

After my somewhat political posts in social media in the recent past, I am not sure whether I am still a no-politics person. However, I am still a harmless person, and always will be. I just want everyone to be happy!

• #Gnuplot tricks.. http://t.co/HEBLPABkWX Nov 21, 2013

I am still not a master.

• A useful online pretty printing service - http://t.co/42YhBC2Oh7 #prettyprint Nov 11, 2013

• What is the origin of name Pradeeban? Probably Switzerland. According to http://t.co/cLtm55JhMQ :D #smh Nov 10, 2013

Seems it is US now. There are pros and cons of having a long name, that is hard to remember and pronounce. Not sure whether pros outweigh the cons though.

• Online Colouring Book - http://t.co/e7x7toL5XT Something for your kids.. :P Oct 19, 2013

I used to buy colouring books as a young kid.

• The man in seat 61 - http://t.co/nkx3RfN9V6 Oct 13, 2013

Just like I developed this habit of booking seat number 55A in the flights, recently.

• It's not normal to get your testicles bitten off, of course, but it can happen, especially now in Sweden. http://t.co/pJGz1scaU1 Aug 14, 2013

ouch! I love the Swedish lakes. Should be more careful. lol.

• Study Hacks.. http://t.co/OiqKhTsLk2 Aug 10, 2013

• Closed #Railway stations of Sri Lanka - http://t.co/AZavXMCFcl || It seems previous generations had a better railway in the country. Aug 07, 2013

Luckily the northern lines are back in service now.

• Collection of oddities.. the odd stuff.. http://t.co/GcXkqAP7iP Aug 02, 2013

The days before clickbaits were mainstream.