Bot or not?

Just because an account doesn’t appear as advanced at using Twitter or disagrees with you, doesn’t mean the account is a bot. But we hear this a lot, so let’s break it down. https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/bot-or-not.html

“Third-party bot hunter tools” are not an authoritative source on what is or is not a bot, especially since most depend on a small sample of Tweets. https://twitter.com/yoyoel/status/1058471837313589248

We see people call accounts “bots” because they’re new to Twitter, don’t have many followers, may not have a profile pic, and only join convos about a specific topic i.e. COVID-19. A lot of people are new to Twitter right now. Let them get the hang of it. https://twitter.com/TwitterIR/status/1255825275746578432

Bot accounts are required to identify themselves.

Compared to a non-bot account where someone is always manually Tweeting and interacting with Tweets or DMs, a bot is one where these behaviors are automated in some way through our API. https://twitter.com/TwitterDev/status/1237435023516729344?s=20

Not all bots are bad. And the Twitter Rules allow for some automation. There are tons of fun and creative bots that make Twitter better — check out @tinycarebot and @everycolorbot.