Price of a bot army revealed across online platforms

> They argue that SIM card regulation could help “disincentivise” online manipulation, and say their tool can be used to test policy interventions the world over.

In Germany, you have to give ISP customer providers (help centers) a copy of your passport ID in a live video stream to authenticate. That was introduced since 2013, for all SIM registrations.

So explain to me, again, how did this help reduce botnet traffic from Russia that uses proxy services of third parties that installed their proxy backdoors in free apps on the PlayStore under the disguise of marketing and advertisement?

I don't understand why Google does not get any critique for allowing so much malware to be officially deployed via their PlayStore? They don't give a damn, have a history of not caring, and are the only point in the supply chain that is the problem. Every service provider that offers residential proxies is using those backdoors, and bought access for it from the advertisement companies.

If you report their Malware or Spamware, they ignore it. Try it, you will be disappointed. Because AdMob and other agencies are their customers. It's the same problem with Microsoft hosting Azure tenants that do spamming, sorry, "marketing campaigns".

Source: I track these companies and their rotating ASNs with zero tolerance for spam. [1]

[1] https://github.com/cookiengineer/antispam

> They argue that SIM card regulation could help “disincentivise” online manipulation, and say their tool can be used to test policy interventions the world over.

Their solution is to deanonymize communication, which you're probably familiar with. That's not a tool for social good, but for government power. We could give government virtually any power, if we assume it will be used only for good.

What's a solution to online manipulation that is actually a social good or cannot be misused? What's a freedom-promoting technology that can replace the disaster that is current social media?

Since I do not have a smartphone or a cell carrier, I only have a voip number, which most sites think is a fake number. As a result I often have to use these shady SMS verification services to get my own personal legitimate accounts open.

These services are a good because sometimes you need to access some information in social networks, which is available only after registration. So what other choices you have? And they often do not even allow registration from desktop:

- Google requires to scan QR code with a phone to create an account

- Facebook requires a 3D face scan

- VK requires to use mobile application

- Telegram requires to use mobile application

Desktop now feels like untrusted, shady device, used mostly by cybercriminals. Especially of you use Linux and enable "fingerprinting resistance" option.

> To register a new account, online platforms require SMS (Short Message Service) verification

Incorrect, see above.

> A fake Facebook account registered in Russia can post about the US elections

Facebook is blocked in Russia though.

As for spam problems, require payment to add new contacts above the limit, and disable messaging to non-contacts. Or restrict messaging based on country/city (so that messaging to a different country is paid).

> The average price of SMS verification for an online platform during the year-long study period running to July 2025 was ... just a fraction of that in the US ($0.26), UK ($0.10) and Russia ($0.08).

That's outdated. With new Russian legislation, most platforms removed support for Russian phone numbers, so now you cannot even find a service that allows to receive SMS to a Russian number. Futhermore, if you Google such services, it seems that they use the same provider because all of them do not have any working Russian numbers.

I like this metric for service security. Which service is the most expensive to buy verification on? So far the best one I've found is Telegram at 166/$100, and the worst is Discord at 5044/$100.

https://cotsi.org/platforms?platform=ds&view=map I wish they showed a graph of services, but it seems like you can only view a graph of countries per service.

I don't understand what these costs represents.

The post focuses on SMS verification, which based on the general level of costs makes sense. A KYC-verified Binance account costs a lot more than they list. But if they're only counting the cost for SMS verification, why would it depend on service? Wouldn't only the phone number's country matter?

Once again I am reminded that "knowing" which accounts are fake is a knowable thing and yet social media companies don't mitigate them "because money" or "because DAU" Etc. When I was running operations at Blekko (a search engine) we were busily identifying all the bots that were attempting ad fraud or scouring the web for vulnerabilities or PII to update "people" data bases. And we just mitigated them[1], even though it meant that from a 'traffic' perspective we were blocking probably 3 - 4 million searches / day.

[1] My favorite mitigation was a machine that accepted the TCP connection from a bot address and just never responded after that (except to keep alives) I think the longest client we had hung that way had been waiting for over 3 months for a web page that never arrived. :-)

Discussion yesterday (172 points, 149 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46257871

From what I get from this article, is that the price for not having my activity directly linked to my identity is under 5 quid for a one time payment. Pretty sweet.

Incredibly suspicious that there's no mention of Reddit

This seems to focus on "verifying" accounts using SMS, but I have never been asked by any service to do this. When does this happen?

>Co-lead author Anton Dek, a researcher at the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance,

I find it amusingly apt that research into fake accounts is done by someone who people must regularly assume is a fake name.

You'd have to carry ID all the time with a name like that.

This is what British people will hear https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant_%26_Dec