How Devumi uses its 3.5M+ automated Twitter accounts, sometimes based on stolen social identities, to sell followers and retweets to 200K+ customers

Everyone wants to be popular online. — Some even pay for it. — Inside social media's black market.

New York Times 2018-01-29

Context & Ripple Effects

This investigation pulled back the curtain on the supply side of social media's black market: Devumi running 3.5M+ automated accounts, some built on real people's stolen identities, and selling followers and retweets to more than 200K customers. The exposé landed a day before New York AG Eric Schneiderman opened a formal probe into the company.

What followed turned a consumer-fraud story into legal precedent — the AG's office ultimately concluded in its settlement against Devumi that selling fake followers or using stolen identities is illegal. Meanwhile, the buyer side of the market adapted fast: marketing agencies began paying for bot-detection tech to vet Instagram influencers rather than trusting follower counts at face value.

First-order effects

Devumi's 200K+ customer base — celebrities, journalists, and others named in the reporting — faces exposure of purchased audiences, while the real people whose identities were harvested have their names and photos attached to bot accounts they never created.
Twitter is put on notice that its platform hosts an industrial-scale impersonation operation, forcing questions about how 3.5M automated accounts went undetected.

Second-order effects

Regulators move in behind the press attention: Schneiderman's investigation into Devumi converts a business model into a law-enforcement target, raising the cost of operating follower farms in New York.
Brands and their agencies can no longer treat follower counts as a pricing input — vetting firms that identify fake followers and bots gain a new revenue stream as influencer marketing due diligence becomes standard.

Third-order effects

If the settlement's logic holds, selling fake engagement becomes a recognized category of fraud rather than a gray-market service, pushing the industry toward verified-audience standards for anyone monetizing reach.
The pattern extends beyond bought followers to organic gaming — services like Fuelgram let real users turn their own accounts into bots to trade likes and comments — meaning platforms must police authenticity not just of vendors but of ordinary users optimizing for the algorithm.

The trend: Social media engagement is shifting from an unregulated vanity metric to a compliance surface, as fraud enforcement and brand-side bot detection force authenticity checks on anyone whose audience carries commercial value.

Discussion

@mcuban Mark Cuban on x
It's time for @twitter to confirm a real name and real person behind every account, and for @facebook to to get far more stringent on the same. I don't care what the user name is. But there needs to be a single human behind every individual account .
@hmason Hilary Mason on x
This piece on the bot economy is excellent for many reasons! The presentation of data, code, and images in the story is fantastic. One aspect of this story that was under-emphasized is Twitter's hostility to victims of impersonation. I was one in 2015. Here's what happened... htt…
@ggreenwald Glenn Greenwald on x
Billionaires like this are able to express their political views freely without fear of repercussions. But many people are not. The ability to speak anonymously/ pseudonymously has long been crucial to the safety of many people or important arguments (see the Federalist Papers) h…
@agschneiderman Eric Schneiderman on x
Impersonation and deception are illegal under New York law. We're opening an investigation into Devumi and its apparent sale of bots using stolen identities. http://twitter.com/...
@page88 Virginia Heffernan on x
THREAD. This from @AGSchneiderman is very good news. I have my own story about impersonation and deception in social media. It's not a victim impact statement. It's just a case study. http://twitter.com/...
@twittercomms Twitter Comms on x
The tactics used by Devumi on our platform and others as described by today's NYT article violate our policies and are unnacceptable to us. We are working to stop them and any companies like them.
@andst7 Andrea Stroppa on x
With @nicoleperlroth we published a similar research 5 years ago. Nothing has changed “fake twitter followers become multimilion-dollar business” http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/ ... http://twitter.com/...
@mcuban Mark Cuban on x
No one can express their political opinions on twitter without fear of repercussions. Not me. Not anyone. The twitter of 2018 is not the twitter of 2011. http://twitter.com/...
@rich_harris Rich Harris on x
This print graphic was made with WebGL. We customised the fragment shader from the online version (http://www.nytimes.com/...) to output 100% cyan, to avoid colour separation in case the printer plates were misaligned http://twitter.com/...
@williamlegate William LeGate on x
I know people who work at Twitter, and they obviously can't say this publicly but Twitter has known about Devumi & other botnets for years now. It's an open secret in Silicon Valley that a significant % of users on here are bots & that Twitter refuses to do anything bc of $ http:…
@noupside Renee DiResta on x
Not to beat a dead horse, but people have been pointing this out since *2014*. Time to get past “shocked, shocked” and get to the action. Curious to see how long it takes for the follower counts on these accounts to drop. http://twitter.com/...
@joefernandez Joe Fernandez on x
We were too early with klout http://twitter.com/...
@beauwoods Beau Woods on x
This could get interesting. Who owns an online identity? Does it imply some kind of a “real name” or KYC process must exist? How might answers to these questions impact monetization of social media platforms whose valuation metrics are propped up by bots? http://twitter.com/...
@andy_staples Andy Staples on x
The reporting and presentation of this NYT story on fake Twitter followers are excellent, but the best part is probably the analogy to stepped-on Parmesan cheese. http://www.nytimes.com/... http://twitter.com/...
@jason_kint Jason Kint on x
Investigative journalism. NYT reporters break important report of black market for fake accounts on platforms, AG opens investigation < 24 hours later. I'd like to know about the fake accounts on Facebook, too. http://twitter.com/...
@anthony Anthony De Rosa on x
As many as 48 million of Twitter's reported active users — nearly 15 percent — are automated accounts designed to simulate real people. http://www.nytimes.com/...
@byrosenberg Mike Rosenberg on x
Fascinating story on why you should be skeptical of online follower and engagement totals, especially when people get tons of retweets 1 second after tweeting http://www.nytimes.com/...
@nickconfessore Nick Confessore on x
One finding of our report on the black market in social media fraud: @Twitter does not proactively police or search for impersonation. Enforcement of their policy depends heavily on users' reporting. https://www.nytimes.com/...
@nickconfessore Nick Confessore on x
Noted: The corporate Twitter account belonging to Devumi, the company we wrote about today, has been suspended. https://www.twitter.com/devumi
@gabrieldance Gabriel Dance on x
a seventeen-year-old girl's identity was ripped from her twitter account and pasted onto a bot that retweeted graphic pornography. then thousands of people paid for that account to follow them. here's a deep look at the seedy underbelly of social media. https://www.nytimes.com/..…
@laforgia_ Michael LaForgia on x
‘One former “American Idol” contestant, Clay Aiken, even paid Devumi to spread a grievance: his customer service complaint against Volvo. Devumi bots retweeted his complaint 5,000 times.’ https://www.nytimes.com/...
@nxthompson Nicholas Thompson on x
Crazy detail from this story: a Twitter board member apparently has fake followers from a bot farm. https://www.nytimes.com/...
@evleaks Evan Blass on x
These infographics created for a (quite interesting) @nytimes exposé on fake social media followers are great, but the Times is in desperate need of an iPhone upgrade [ https://www.nytimes.com/... ] pic.twitter.com/chpCpnYyla
@adamdangelo Adam D'Angelo on x
The New York Times is better at finding fake Twitter accounts than Twitter itself, and Twitter openly admits they don't care about them as long as they don't spam. This matters because these tactics enable a massive amount of political influence. https://www.nytimes.com/...
@crampell Catherine Rampell on x
guy fired from company that sells fake Twitter accounts impersonating real accounts goes on to create new company impersonating his old company, also impersonates customers from old company. https://www.nytimes.com/... pic.twitter.com/W5nsiIfxJS
@amyspitalnick Amy Spitalnick on x
Our office is opening an investigation into Devumi and its apparent sale of bots using stolen IDs — part of @AGSchneiderman's broader focus on the growing use of bots & online impersonation. http://twitter.com/...
@dnvolz Dustin Volz on x
Cannot recommend this NYT opus enough. One of the most thorough reporting efforts I've seen looking at the growth of an industry that profits from warping social media to create an internet that is fundamentally less real than anyone is willing to admit. http://www.nytimes.com/..…
@nonwhitehat Patrick Nonwhite on x
Back in 2014 we had to take @Popehat private for the better part of a week, because some ass was trying to get us banned by buying fake followers. We were getting about a hundred followers an hour. http://twitter.com/...
@seanmcarroll Sean Carroll on x
Best part of this NYT article on online bots is the snippets of “sample code” they use to illustrate the different types. http://www.nytimes.com/...
@pekingmike Mike Forsythe on x
In China, Twitter is banned. That doesn't stop the Communist Party's flagship News organization, @XHNews , from buying hundreds of thousands of fake twitter followers. We now have the proof thanks to @nickconfessore @gabrieldance @Rich_Harris http://www.nytimes.com/...
@brianstelter Brian Stelter on x
Buying fake Twitter followers? This story names names. Some you might be surprised by, some you... won't be http://twitter.com/...
@hunterwalk @hunterwalk on x
Twitter is an amazing product that I use and enjoy daily BUT... Twitter's originals sins are its inability to police bots/spam & passivity re abuse. http://twitter.com/...
@sarahkendzior Sarah Kendzior on x
Interesting article on celebrities and others who buy fake followers on Twitter to make themselves seem more popular than they are. Here's a list of journalists — and a magazine — that do it: http://www.nytimes.com/... http://twitter.com/...
@lourdesgnavarro Lulu Garcia-Navarro on x
“They bought bots because their careers had come to depend, in part, on the appearance of social media influence.” http://twitter.com/...
@andyroddick @andyroddick on x
I found this interesting. Makes sense that companies starting to value engagement more than an actual follower count when it comes to influencers http://twitter.com/...

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