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.

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?

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. :-)

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.

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