DooKey
[H]F Junkie
- Joined
- Apr 25, 2001
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- 13,578
Online drug dealers better watch out because there is a new machine learning sheriff on the internet. Researchers at the University of California San Diego have developed a machine learning technology that mined Twitter to identify drug dealers selling opioids online. Between June and November of 2015 they found over 600K tweets that contained a number of keywords of prescription opioids. Of those, 1,778 posts were marketing the sale of the controlled substances and 90 percent included hyperlinks for online purchase. A majority of retailers had web addresses based in Pakistan, the researchers found. As for me, I'm not a war on drugs warrior, but I do understand that unregulated use of hard drugs is a drain on society and something needs to be done to combat the ill effects of drug use. What that is I just don't know. Read the original study here.
“Our study demonstrates the utility of a technology to aid in these efforts that searches social media for behavior that poses a public threat, such as the illegal sale of controlled substances,” Tim K. Mackey, UC San Diego School of Medicine associate professor of anesthesiology, said in a press release.
“Our study demonstrates the utility of a technology to aid in these efforts that searches social media for behavior that poses a public threat, such as the illegal sale of controlled substances,” Tim K. Mackey, UC San Diego School of Medicine associate professor of anesthesiology, said in a press release.