In recent times I’ve increasingly been asked by X (Twitter) to pass tests to prove I’m a human being to access my X account - presumably because my Raspberry Shake Posts look like they could be produced by a bot. That’s OK I do the tests… but the last couple of days, I’m seeing fewer and fewer seismology posts not just from Raspishake, but all seismology sources (USGS, IRIS, EarthquakesGA, Ausquake, etc).
Is anyone else experiencing this?
Al.
Hello Al,
That happened to me too a couple of times in the past. I discovered that adding a small text comment to what I’m posting (that, in the end, explains what the images show) helped those requests stop.
I haven’t noticed a particular decrease from the most prominent agencies (like USGS and similar), but I may be wrong about that.
As for us, our activity is within average, so maybe something in the overall algorithm has changed? As I personally use the new TweetDeck (also for work purposes), I have tailored my streams for what I’m interested in, so I may be less informed on what is happening on a “general” tweet stream.
G’Day Stormchaser,
At the time I wrote this, about 4 days ago, I’d noticed almost a complete lack of seismology posts on both my normal feed and I have another feed set up on #seismology (which only had 2 posts which were nothing to do with seismology).
That continued until the day before yesterday, when I had plenty!
I don’t know what’s going on with their feed…?
I think posting complete sets of arrivals in detail (examples of finding weak arrivals) is just asking for trouble, so I’ll stop doing that and just post a main arrival or two… and as you say add a small comment to make each look different. They are probably checked by a bot… more than x posts with similar text = spam is probably the basis of the algorithm.
Al.
Good day to you sheeny,
Interesting, to say the least! I’ve seen that, sometimes, my columns on TweetDeck have empty content, or old content that doesn’t update. Usually, after a “clean” or a Ctrl+F5 refresh, they come back, but who knows what work they are always doing in the background?
I agree about the weak arrivals posting. I did the same at the start, but there is even less interaction compared to the already “low” stats for the main arrivals, as it becomes difficult to notice them.
I now only do main ones, and when possible, plot out the surface waves. Nothing else.
I do know that Χ have been concentrating on clearing out the bots recently. As you can guess, it’s a pretty thankless and never ending task, but it is making a difference. One of the “prices” is exactly what you have seen - post things that look close to identical and nothing else and you may get challenged. The suggestion to add a line or so of text would probably avoid that.
Another problem is that the API, which I think some groups used to automatically post things is no longer open, since that, it turned out, was a favorite of the bot writers too.
I know a lot of seismologists that I have been following have been moving to BlueSky, mainly fed up with trolls on X I think (or is it me? lol!). I don’t think they’ve left X entirely, but reduced their posts.
BlueSky is only young ATM, but seems to be growing quickly. Not sure how they’ll manage to avoid the trolls appearing there as well eventually, but I guess they are chasing some respite from them.
Al.