#unhackthevote

Bots Thread 4

HowTo Spot a Bot

What is a Twitter Bot?

A Twitter bot is a human-machine hybrid. There is a human behind the account that controls the machine,  but much of the activity is automated.

Thread

In many cases the system behind a Twitter bot is a botnet -  a network of computers that have been infected with a virus that causes them to run a program that communicates with the Twitter APIs.

Each of these computers, unbeknownst to its owner, is "tweeting" propaganda. The exact content of these tweets is controlled by the owner of the botnet.

link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botnet 

How can you tell if a twitter account is likely to be a bot?

There are five signs. If you see two or more of these you probably have a bot on your hands. Feel free to block and report.

The account has significant number of tweets and / or likes in a short period of time, for instance 50-100 tweets or likes per day. You can figure this number out by dividing the total tweets by the number of days since the account was created.

2. A very small number of personal tweets and media compared  to the number of retweets and tweets of existing articles or other content. The account may have thousands of tweets and no media files, for instance.

3. Identical tweets appearing in other accounts at the exact same time. You can do an advanced Twitter search to check this. link: https://twitter.com/search-advanced?lang=en

Here is an example of sign 3. These are the results for a search of "Minnesota Replaces Al Franken With Lt. Governor Tina Smith".

When you click on each of these tweets you can see that all were posted at exactly the same time - 9:05.

4. The account's Twitter handle is made of of a number of random letters and numbers that have no semblance of matching the account name, like the account "emily" with the twitter handle "bakchadur7eyger".

Many twitter handles that end in an 8 digit sequence that is not in a date format are fake accounts with computer generated handles. For example, if the account name is James Bundy and his twitter handle is @Jamesbu04926114 you may have a bot on your hands.

5. The account has a significant number of foreign accounts as followers even though the account is only sending out content related to a completely different country. The same pattern is usually found in the accounts that follow the suspected bots.

Our example from our last thread shows these accounts following and being followed by the account "emily" that was tweeting about Al Franken