A twitter bot is an automated program that tweets, likes, follows, or does any other action that a normal (human) twitter user can do. But, unlike a human, a twitter bot can perform tasks over and over without becoming bored, sleep deprived, or dead. Botometer® (formerly BotOrNot) checks the activity of Twitter accounts and gives them a score based on how likely they are to be bots. Higher scores are more bot-like. Brought to you by the Observatory on Social Media (OSoMe) at Indiana University. Go to Twitter Bots to open the Twitter bots application. Enter the Twitter Consumer Key, Consumer Secret, Access Token and Access Secret that were generated in the previous step. Next, you need to specify the search phrase for the bots. The app will find all new tweets that match this search phrase and process them all, one at a time.

June 16, 2020

Scammers are finding success with a tool designed to infiltrate social media accounts and potentially your personal information: Twitter bots.

What are they? If you’ve seen Twitter accounts spreading fake news or tweets falsely claiming they have a cure for COVID-19, you may have spotted Twitter bots.

These social media bots do nefarious things like trolling and propagating misinformation for purposes that include spinning elections, inciting panic, and spreading malware.

It’s a good idea to learn what Twitter bots can do, how prevalent they are, and how to detect these automated accounts to help protect your devices and personal information.

Twitter bots surge: What are they and what can they do?

Twitter bots, also known as zombies, are automated Twitter accounts controlled by bot software. While they are programmed to perform tasks that resemble those of everyday Twitter users — such as liking tweets and following other users — their purpose is to tweet and retweet content for specific goals on a large scale.

The purpose of the bot and its activity can be helpful or harmful.

Twitter bots can be used for helpful purposes, such as broadcasting important content like weather emergencies in real time, sharing informative content en masse, and generating automatic replies via direct messaging.

Twitter bots also can be designed for the malicious purposes of platform intimidation and manipulation — like spreading fake news campaigns, spamming, violating others’ privacy, and sock-puppeting.

You might wonder if one account can cause damage. It usually takes a larger effort. Twitter bots are often part of what’s known as a botnet. A botnet is a broad network of automated accounts that work together to appear legitimate, liking and following each other as if they were real. Worth noting: Bots also operate on other social media platforms.

Twitter bot scams

Twitter bots rely on stealth. As artificial automations, they can pretend to be real people, liking your tweets and content. Or they can act as malicious bots that try to intimidate, bully, persuade, and incite you to believe things that may not be true and act in ways that are fueled by false information.

Twitter Bot Finder

Cybercriminals have used Twitter bots to spread malicious content that contains malware to large groups of Twitter users at the same time. You can help protect yourself against such malware by not clicking on links in tweets and other communications from unknown or suspicious sources.

Twitter bots also have been used for political propaganda and to influence elections. Countries and interest groups may use Twitter bots to spread discontent or panic. That could potentially affect healthcare system, financial markets, community actions, and elections.

How prevalent are Twitter bots?

How many bots are in the Twittersphere? That’s hard to say. But a Carnegie Mellon University study showed a surge in bot activity while the United States has been under stay-at-home orders.

The Carnegie Mellon study found almost half of the Twitter accounts calling for America to reopen may be bots. The same study looked at more than 200 million tweets since January 2020 that reference the novel coronavirus. It found that of the top 50 retweeters, 41 — 82 percent — were bots.

The lesson? When it comes to Twitter, be careful about believing what appears to be the broad consensus or engaging in the conversation. It could be a misinformation campaign.

7 ways to recognize a Twitter bot

Here are several ways to help detect if a Twitter account is a bot or not. Keep in mind, a bot’s setup and activity often appears automated.

Twitter Botw

When trying to determine if an account might be a bot, beware of the following red flags:

1. IP correlation — the geographical location of Twitter accounts.
2. Time-based correlation — the release of tweets in close proximity.
3. Automation — when an account tweets short replies that appear automated.
4. Content similarity — when the same content is tweeted at the same time.
5. Account creation — Twitter bots with recent creation dates.
6. Account description — when an account looks automated because its username contains numbers. Also, it appears anonymous in the absence of a photo, biography, or profile description.
7. Account activity — when a bot follows a lot of accounts but does not have many followers, and it’s retweeting and tweeting content faster than a human could.

What is Twitter doing to combat bots?

Twitter prohibits these malicious uses of its platform, including these activities:

• Automation meant to undermine public conversation.
• The creation of multiple accounts to artificially amplify messages.
• Involvement in fake engagements by generation, solicitation, or purchase.
• Aggressive use of Twitter in the form of tweets, follows, and other engagements.
• Hashtag cramming or using hashtags for spamming purposes.

What does Twitter do about automated accounts engaging in the prohibited activities? The social media platforms suspends millions of bot accounts each month.

What can you do to combat Twitter bots?

You can find browser plugins that look at indicators to help identify whether or not a Twitter account is a bot. These third-party tools can help flag suspicious accounts so you won’t be fooled.

Whether you use a third-party tool or learn to recognize bots yourself, it’s smart to understand how automated platforms can enable the mass spread of false information.

Awareness and caution can help. It’s a good idea to watch for red flags and be skeptical about information contained in tweets. Go to reputable sources for fact-checking. And avoid clicking on links in tweets that could be embedded with malware.

Flag suspected bot accounts on Twitter in real-time. Available on iOS and as a browser extension.

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It’s no secret that there are bots on Twitter. But how do bot accounts – which automatically create tweets without direct human oversight – actually affect the mix of content on Twitter?

A new Pew Research Center study, conducted over a six-week period in the summer of 2017, examined 1.2 million tweets with URL links to determine what share of links were posted by bots on Twitter. The study identified bots using Botometer, which learns patterns from hand-classified account data produced by trained experts.

To count how many times human and bot accounts shared links to particular websites, we wrote a computer program to follow each shared link to its destination. Then we isolated the 2,315 most commonly shared sites with meaningful content and classified the kinds of content that appear on those sites.

Here are five key takeaways from the study:

1Two-thirds (66%) of all tweeted links were shared by suspected bots. This includes links to different kinds of content around the web, ranging from adult content to commercial products and even to links that redirect internally to Twitter.com. This estimate suggests that automated accounts are more prolific than human users in sharing links on Twitter.

2Suspected bots also accounted for 66% of tweeted links to sites focused on news and current events. That’s a lower share than for sites focused on adult content (90%), sports (76%) and commercial products (73%), but higher than for sites focused on celebrities (62%), those focused on organizations or groups (53%) or internal links to Twitter.com (50%). News and current events websites include sites that produce original reporting on events in public life, those that mostly aggregate news from other sites, and those that focus primarily on commentary or discussion.

3Among news and current events sites, those with political content saw the lowest proportion (57%) of bot shares. While much of the discussion surrounding bots has centered around their sharing of political content, this study finds that the proportion of automated link shares among sites featuring political content is lower than among sites not featuring political content. Suspected bots shared a little more than half of links to sites with political content – defined as sites that have a dedicated politics section on their main page or have political stories among their top headlines — but the share was 74% among sites related to news and current events that did not feature political content.

4About nine-in-ten tweeted links to popular news aggregation sites (89%) were posted by bots, not human users. This is a significantly higher share than for sites that primarily produce their own news content. These aggregation sites often feature a screenshot or posted image of a news story produced by another news outlet, as well as a description of the original reporting.

5A small number of highly active bots were responsible for a large share of links to prominent news and media sites. We found that the 500 most active suspected bot accounts were responsible for 22% of the tweeted links to popular news and current events sites during the study period. By comparison, the 500 most active human users were responsible for a much smaller share (an estimated 6%) of tweeted links to these outlets.

Note: These findings are based on an analysis of a sample of 1.2 million public tweets collected via Twitter’s streaming API between July 27 and Sept. 6, 2017, containing links to popular websites. See the report’s Methodology section for more details.

Twitter Bot For Discord