
Analysis of 200M tweets discussing coronavirus suggests 45%-60% come from bots - nixtaken
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/about-half-of-the-twitter-accounts-calling-for-reopening-america-are-probably-bots-report-2020-05-26
======
zaxm
Bunch of threads on twitter from expert researchers on how this study is
bogus. The main point is that there is zero paper or even a blog post that can
be referenced to see if this statistic is true.

* [https://twitter.com/ngleicher/status/1264614994475315200](https://twitter.com/ngleicher/status/1264614994475315200)

* [https://twitter.com/benimmo/status/1265329734705197056](https://twitter.com/benimmo/status/1265329734705197056)

* [https://twitter.com/alexstamos/status/1264643202293751808](https://twitter.com/alexstamos/status/1264643202293751808)

* [https://twitter.com/3r1nG/status/1264567090742206464](https://twitter.com/3r1nG/status/1264567090742206464)

(edit to add more examples of counterclaims to this "research")

~~~
koheripbal
This is the closest I could get to as an original source...

[https://www.cs.cmu.edu/news/nearly-half-twitter-accounts-
dis...](https://www.cs.cmu.edu/news/nearly-half-twitter-accounts-
discussing-%E2%80%98reopening-america%E2%80%99-may-be-bots?mod=article_inline)

I imagine they're going to publish the research, but it doesn't look like they
have yet.

...though some of their methods are described.

~~~
mch82
This quote from the CMU article lines up with the headline on this HN
discussion thread (200M, 62%, bots, COVID-19):

> CMU researchers since January have collected more than 200 million tweets
> discussing coronavirus or COVID-19. Of the top 50 influential retweeters,
> 82% are bots, they found. Of the top 1,000 retweeters, 62% are bots.

Fascinating article. Thank you for taking the time to find it.

~~~
leereeves
That suggests an entirely different conclusion: that bots are better at
becoming influential on Twitter than people are.

~~~
dmix
Influential if you want your audience to be entirely made of other bots.

------
lukeholder
One thing I considered with bots like these is that it doesn't matter which
side of an issue they are pushing, the end result is just to further divide
the 2 sides. So I think that's the goal.

The issue they push with the bots may not be, and likely isn't, their actual
position on the issue.

~~~
guerrilla
What do you base that on? Division may just be an emergent phenomenon or one
rooted in the reality of opposing interests.

~~~
crazygringo
It's part of the Russian/Putin playbook. Their mission isn't to promote any
particular interests within America or other countries, as much as to maximize
divisiveness and weaken democracy as much as possible so that Russia is
stronger and less threatened in comparison.

~~~
082349872349872
... and over on RUnet, I saw memes about US botting.

Too bad we can't have a Geneva Convention on botnets or something. (I would
write "couldn't", but don't believe it's technically feasible)

------
xrd
It's pretty crazy that a few researchers can identify this in a short month or
two of work.

It's even crazier that Twitter can't do that research themselves and remove
those bots.

Obviously the big debate is censorship. It feels like there could be a tech
solution to this, where conversations aren't shaped by volume, but I guess
that is what Twitter is anyway.

~~~
brianwawok
How many real people is it OK to squash when squashing bots? How confident can
you be when banning accounts?

It’s a lot harder problem then it might sound on the surface. And realize if
you find bots 100%, they will change for round 2 and the game starts over.

~~~
programmarchy
Maybe they don't need to ban accounts, but instead put up a "bot check", sort
of like their new editorial process? Something along the lines of "This
account has been identified as likely being a bot. Read more." To remedy a
false positive, the human could provide Twitter with a an official ID to
remove the warning.

~~~
gruez
Then you get hate from the hn crowd about how they're violating everyone's
privacy by deanonymizing them

~~~
leereeves
Worse, Twitter can't be trusted to keep the IDs safe. They've suffered many
data breaches in the past.

And it wouldn't even stop the bots, because Twitter isn't limited to
Americans, so bot makers could easily send fake official IDs from someplace
Twitter can't check. Or send stolen offical IDs from other data breaches.

~~~
joering2
I bet there are some ThisIDDoesNotExist websites that bots use to autogenerate
vast majority of fake ids, probably by using ThisPersonDoesNotExist website.

You can generate realistc photos of IDs from countries that Twitter cannot
positively verify those bc in USA there are ways to check authentity of your
document. But IDs from Russia or Ukraine - no way.

------
ta1234567890
Not surprising at all. From my experience with Twitter, I would say 45-50% of
all tweets come from bots.

I feel like there are 4 types of Twitter users: 1) bots, 2) influencers that
heavily use automation to the point where they are almost the same as a bot,
3) famous/popular that are somewhat to mostly real, but have someone else
managing their account for them, 4) real people who think 1-3 are all real
that gained their followers organically.

Probably most users fall on categories 1 and 4 above, although most of Twitter
traffic is probably generated by tweets of 2 and 3.

~~~
ta6382936526
From my experience with the full graph, it's closer to 80% bots (both tweets
and users). My knowledge may be dated, though.

~~~
klysm
You mean both 80% of the users are bots and 80% of the tweets are from bots? I
would find that fairly surprising that bots and users work out to be the same
proportion in both of those.

~~~
rozab
Well if a bot wanted to mimic normal user behaviour, the first step would be
tweeting the same amount

------
diablo1
Twitter is so easy to game. I once wrote a script that auto-likes everything
on the page and ran into no throttling by Twitter - It simply let me rack up
an enormous like count nearing 1 million random likes. I got lots of followers
as a result because they thought my like was a genuine human interaction and I
'cared' for them in some way. Far from it.

I think Twitter needs to add an option which marks an account as a bot or non-
human account so that people can gauge instantly what the account's real
motivations are. Most actual bots will ignore that setting and pretend to be
human however, so the responsibility is on Twitter to weed out automated
accounts that are obvious attempts to game the platform.

~~~
dorkwood
I wouldn't be surprised if the people that chose to follow you based purely on
receiving a like were also bots.

------
nixtaken
The idea that half of Twitter's accounts are bots is not new:
[https://gizmodo.com/how-many-social-media-users-are-real-
peo...](https://gizmodo.com/how-many-social-media-users-are-real-
people-1826447042) (written in 2018) Another older article puts the issue into
a larger social context and makes some sloppy estimates: "Since Twitter’s
yearly revenue is between 2 and 3 billion dollars — that is as much as 50
dollars per potential customer on average and that doesn’t count what people
are spending to purchase fake followers and bots. If only English speaking
customers are targeted by Twitter ads, that means 150 dollars is being spent
to grab the attention of each customer."
[https://kirstenhacker.wordpress.com/2019/08/05/the-fake-
econ...](https://kirstenhacker.wordpress.com/2019/08/05/the-fake-economies-of-
the-internet/)

~~~
nixtaken
Personally, I watched a guy who was promoting his crappy, plagiarized book go
from 25k followers to 90k followers over the course of a week. They were all
clearly fake since he rarely got more than a single like on everything he
Tweeted.

------
Drybones
These articles are as misinformation themselves as the tweets they're talking
about

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Found the bot...

Kidding, but there's a real point. 40% of tweets are from bots? OK, how many
"studies" are from bots? (I believe that's in the neighborhood of Drybones'
point.) But how many comments responding to the studies are from bots?

Way back in the day, I remember reading the Cluetrain Manifesto. It said that
corporate-speak sounded literally inhuman. Well, the bots have gotten better
over the years. But also, it seems to me that the humans have gotten worse.
They are less able to say "Wait, that doesn't make sense." They are even less
able to say "Wait, that doesn't sound like the way humans talk." And that's
bad. As the bots get better, the humans need to be developing _better_
filters, not regressing.

~~~
dorkwood
I think there's a sci-fi story buried in here. In the future, when humans die
out, online conversation somehow continues at the usual pace.

------
ed25519FUUU
Seems like an easy way to discredit any idea or person. Just hire bot farms to
promote it.

* 50% of positive posts for candidate x are bots!

* Most people who support X online are bots!

Easy and cheap, and the message carries well.

~~~
dorkwood
That seems like a dangerous strategy, since you're also promoting the idea or
person you seek to destroy.

------
yalogin
Why does Twitter allow bots to tweet? If a researcher can determine that a
tweet came from a bot, can twitter not do that?

~~~
esmi
> If a researcher can determine that a tweet came from a bot

That condition is the key. Are you sure they can do that? It’s very tough to
do with certainty.

------
dang
Many previous submissions, e.g.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23261815](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23261815).

------
brandonmenc
I just assume 45%-60% of tweets _in general_ come from bots.

------
nixtaken
They could get rid of bots with Captchas, but they don't. That suggests to me
that the people funding Twitter want to be able to use bots.

------
bluedays
This article is basically a summary of this article.
[https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/05/21/1002105/covid-
bo...](https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/05/21/1002105/covid-bot-twitter-
accounts-push-to-reopen-america/)

I often wonder when we are going to see more left wing reactions to this sort
of behavior. Seems the right, based on my limited information, seems to be
more aggressive about these disinformation campaigns.

Also it stands to reason that this particular misinformation campaign is being
sponsored by a foreign state. I think that this would be an effective weapon
to use against the United States. Sort of like biological warfare by proxy of
disinformation.

~~~
sokoloff
I have quite a “purple feed” on FB. I have to say that I see a lot of utterly
ridiculous content created ostensibly supporting both blue and red
causes/topics.

If you primarily think one side is crafting ridiculously bad content and it’s
therefore a misinformation campaign from a foreign state, I think it’s wise to
consider how much of that is personal bias and if you’re perhaps “giving a
pass” to stupid content that at least aligns with your views.

“Well, they meant well, so it’s probably just a right-minded American who made
a simple off-by-factor-of-a-million arithmetic error and no one spent 50ms
doing a basic sanity check. No one’s perfect.”

Or “Look, maybe I think Obama did an Ok job, but I saw all that content about
he wasn’t born here, and there has to be something to it if so many people are
talking about it. The government hides things; the truth is out there, ya
know? Oh, and Epstein didn’t kill himself.”

~~~
bluedays
It's telling that I bring this up and this is the response I get. Maybe there
is a possibility that it is a state sponsored disinformation campaign? There
is overwhelming evidence that disinformation is being spread by several state
sponsored groups.

Again, I said from my "limited view", as it's impossible to have all the
information. It seems TO ME that there is quite a bit more targeted
misinformation coming from the right.

I would love to be corrected. However, I don't think saying "I got a Facebook
feed with lots of stuff stuff coming out of it", and "you're stupid because of
xyz I assume about you for no reason whatsoever" qualifies in this regard.

~~~
sokoloff
If “I think it’s wise to consider how much of that is personal bias”
translates directly to “you’re stupid because of xyz I assume about you”, then
it seems like we’re not effectively communicating.

I’m sorry for the portion of that where the fault is mine.

~~~
bluedays
Maybe you're right. Your tone, and granted this it the Internet where tone is
implied by the reader, seemed very presumptuous. I think ultimately the first
part of my post was an, admittedly, biased opinion. So yeah, I am probably
wrong about that. Though, I would really like to see some data on this.

However, I am concerned about a disinformation campaign which could,
theoretically, be sponsored by a foreign state to get people to ignore the
very real threat of coronations.

~~~
sokoloff
Sorry for the tone. I tend towards a little formal perhaps, but it’s intended
to be optimized for precision not presumption.

I am also concerned about foreign influence, but I also observe that we meddle
in other countries’ affairs as well, so it’s just a fact of life and social
media changes it but didn’t start it. I’m more concerned with a population who
isn’t thinking critically and with the right balance of short and long term
(and is therefore especially susceptible to influence), but whether the
influence is foreign or domestic doesn’t matter as much to me as the effect of
the influence.

------
domsom
Adding an option to verify accounts by linking them to social security numbers
or corporate registrations and marking them accordingly (without necessarily
making the details visible publicly) could at least direct trust to accounts
that can be traced to real entities.

~~~
dathinab
The problem is that the US has no proper/well working ID systems. A large
amount of social security numbers had been compromised through leakage and are
hardly reliably usable for identification anymore.

Through there are many countries in which this can be indeed done reliably
sand effectively.

Through the main problem is still this networks are global, so bots will just
register with origins where IDs can be easily faked/stolen etc.

But it might still help a lot for local discussions if you would make it
clearly visible if a person had a no or a non local real person
identification.

If such a system is done cleverly it could also help law enforcement while it
still upholds privacy. Through it's will always be someway prone to abuse by
police and similar if not done perfectly transparent but you can be sure that
certain lobbies will invest insane amounts of money into making it non
transparent over time. Which makes such systems potential dangerous to have.

------
taeric
I'm cynical enough to think you can almost certainly say the same of the
reverse, too. :(

That said, with reading this, if you are thinking of skipping it. Does
somewhat confirm that most of the not posts are on conspiracy theories. Which,
I guess is not that surprising. Even if the conspiracies are.

------
Simulacra
I think we have to except that there are bots everywhere, here, Wikipedia,
read it, Twitter, etc. It doesn’t appear to be slowing down but instead
increasing in growing in magnitude, if this article is to be believed it
doesn’t appear to be slowing down but instead increasing and growing in
magnitude, if this article is to be believed.

------
ovi256
So ? What fraction of the accounts calling for further lockdown are bots ?

~~~
happytoexplain
Starting a sentence with "so?" implies that you don't care that X position has
a lot of bots behind it. But then your followup question implies that you
_would_ care if position Y has a lot of bots behind it. Shouldn't this be a
"that's bad, I wonder how bad it is on the other side" kind of situation? Why
are you defending this?

~~~
scrollaway
Seeing the space before the question mark, it sounds like the person you are
replying to is French.

It's not unlikely the "So?" is meant as an "alright then, can we now have the
answer to ...". I've made that exact mistake.

------
isoskeles
I’m not sure why Twitter bots matter, and I assume the only point is to
discredit the argument of people against lockdowns.

Real people have also been out protesting the lockdowns, in the real world,
not on Twitter. People were legitimately upset, rightfully so, when protestors
were showing up with guns in Michigan.

~~~
dathinab
It matters if it means that much less people then believed do protest. I don't
know if it does mean it, it could, but it also could not. It also matters
because it means some people try to manipulate what is perceived as the
"Twitter public" opinion.

~~~
082349872349872
That's why one never counts "twitter public", but real protestors. A small
silver lining to coronavirus is that crowd size estimation is much easier when
the crowd is on a 2m lattice.

Edit: not very useful these days, but still of possible interest:
[http://www.gkstill.com/Support/crowd-
density/100sm/Density1....](http://www.gkstill.com/Support/crowd-
density/100sm/Density1.html)

~~~
Simulacra
I use to hear a lot they in customer service one angry customer might
represent only one person, but more than one on an issue could possibly point
to an exponentially larger dissatisfied group. People who complain versus
people who do not, people who call versus email, etc. I do not know if this is
still accurate.

~~~
082349872349872
I'd agree in general. On the other hand, astroturfing is much older that TWTR
(or even AstroTurf), eg
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torches_of_Freedom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torches_of_Freedom)
or
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claque](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claque)

Somewhere I'd read a book on propaganda by a fellow who produced it in ww2 and
finished his introduction with biblical examples of the main techniques.

------
dependenttypes
Sure, there are indeed bots on twitter, mostly for advertisements, but I kinda
doubt that there are bots operated by states. That being said, even if such
bots existed, what would be the point? The only effect seems to be that you
have people from both camps accusing each other of being bots. In addition to
quote the user repolfx from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20776752](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20776752)

> Namely, their rationale was something like this: the world is dominated by
> people whose opinions are fundamentally shaped by what others are saying,
> and moreover, by how frequently other people seem to be saying it. They
> don't really think about things or rely on their own experience: they're
> just mimics.

> In such a world being able to auto-generate fake messages of support for
> some political position or another at scale would give you immense power,
> because the population would automatically swing behind you based merely on
> the perception that everyone was swinging behind you.

> So that's their fear. But is it realistic?

> Well, this is where we get into the polarisation. "You aren't smart enough
> to have an opinion" is the sort of viewpoint that leads to an elitist vs
> populist conflict. There have been reams of analysis about this and it's not
> really AI specific - e.g. did people vote for Brexit because of Twitter, or
> because of things they saw in the press, or did they vote based on their own
> experiences, or what their close friends/family thought, or what mix of "all
> of the above" is the truest mix?"

