
CMU Researchers: Nearly Half of Accounts Tweeting About Coronavirus Are Bots - Scipio_Afri
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/05/20/859814085/researchers-nearly-half-of-accounts-tweeting-about-coronavirus-are-likely-bots
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elamje
I went bot hunting a few weeks ago and it was incredibly insightful. What’s
interesting is you can just drill in deeper and deeper by looking at the
followers of bot accounts, which are very likely bots themselves. Many created
in Feb and March 2020 with thousands of tweets already. I had a lot of fun
thinking about the heuristics to detect a bot. Some common ones seemed to be
they follow a bot, they have inflammatory bio, banner, or profile pictures.
Many tweet really polarizing things.

Here is a thread I did about it. I actually tagged a suspect account and the
troll started commenting in the thread, DMed me, reported random tweets, and a
bunch of other stuff.

[https://twitter.com/elamje/status/1259691257724579841?s=21](https://twitter.com/elamje/status/1259691257724579841?s=21)

The first bot seems to launch ad hominem attacks on organic users via retweets
with comments saying something terrible about them. When it doesn’t do that,
it just retweets other accounts that do the same strategy.

~~~
metrokoi
>Some common ones seemed to be they follow a bot, they have inflammatory bio,
banner, or profile pictures. Many tweet really polarizing things.

Perhaps many are real people who get banned often and create new accounts,
hence the recent account created dates and inflammatory bio, banner, etc. I
often hear about bots and their influence on the internet, but I don't seem to
see them that often. Granted, I try not to spend a lot of time on social
media, nor do I actively search for them. I suppose I have never seen a clear
definition of what makes a bot a bot.

~~~
elamje
Sure. In the thread I elaborate that they typically have already cranked out
thousands of tweets. Some seem more innocuous. Some seem to have already
gained 50 followers in a month or two. That’s possible, but hard without a
viral tweet. Some might be real users.

~~~
anigbrowl
You'll probably like the tools from the U of Indiana's social media labs:
[http://osome.iuni.iu.edu/tools/](http://osome.iuni.iu.edu/tools/)

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Drybones
As someone who spends way too much time on Twitter (been using it since 2008),
I see these kinds of articles often and have hardly ever encountered these
types of bots.

Additionally, I've had my own account locked and shadow/ghost banned on
twitter for having the words coronavirus or COVID-19 in tweets. It took weeks
of never tweeting those words to undo it.

I've even had my personal and business twitter accounts suspended all at once
for "Violating Twitter rules of using multiple accounts for targeted
harassment." They restored some of these accounts after filing an appeal and
they said "We're sorry, but our systems mistakenly flagged your account." They
never restored all of them and the ones restored have been locked permanently
again because one account logged into the app used the C words again. One of
the suspended accounts never to return was a 10K follower image bot for tech
and old school computer images. Another was an account for my main business to
announce news and server status updates.

Whether bots are mucking up Twitter or not, Twitter itself is a horrible
platform and company. I can't wait for the service to disappear into oblivion.

~~~
throwaway-2020
>Twitter itself is a horrible platform and company. I can't wait for the
service to disappear into oblivion.

You can always walk away from a service. If you are waiting for the next "Big
Thing" to ditch your problems you will find that even this new shiny platform
will (eventually) have the same or worse problems.

The internet is a rabble that needs taming. Services automate a lot of stuff
to try to tame us, but nothing is perfect. Innocent users get banned.

If you are building a business on these services don't rely on just one. Build
redundancy into your marketing, use many channels.

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fzeroracer
This is part of the problem I have with the narrative that you must allow
completely unfettered speech on any platform. That you should fight lies with
the truth.

That sort of argument ends up going completely out the window when you have
bot accounts spun up by the thousands designed to artificially boost certain
narrative for the sake of profit or to sow dissent. Much like managing your
lawn, you can't let the weeds grow and expect other plants to simply out-
compete them when the weeds choke out everything else around them.
Unfortunately that seems to be an inevitable problem on any platform that
prioritizes userbase growth above all else.

~~~
IIAOPSW
Did you just make this analogy up? I ask because it sounds a lot like "Well-
kept gardens die by pacifism".

[https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tscc3e5eujrsEeFN4/well-
kept-...](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tscc3e5eujrsEeFN4/well-kept-gardens-
die-by-pacifism)

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bobbiechen
I wonder how many of these are actively trying to influence the conversation,
as opposed to just piling onto a trending hashtag with irrelevant material. As
an example, I picked the currently trending hashtag
#YouKnowYoureASidePieceWhen and immediately found this spam:
[https://twitter.com/DebtReliefLoans/status/12637033931193712...](https://twitter.com/DebtReliefLoans/status/1263703393119371268?s=19)

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bransonf
I know a few people who do Twitter bot detection as sort of a hobby, and I
would say you have to be skeptic of these numbers from both directions.

Obvious bots are, well, obvious. Novice or careless implementations lead to
accounts that tweet at the same time or based on the same trigger words.
Tweets made on a routine basis are the easiest to detect (e.g. Tweets at 5PM
CST every day)

But things go much deeper. There are even companies that now develop bots
tools essentially, increasing the randomness or human-like qualities of bots.
These are much harder to detect with the standard methods.

There are other proxies, like not getting organic replies or having no
friends. But the sophisticated bot networks have already figured this out. You
have to realize that sometimes human labor even goes into the effort, where
someone will maintain hundreds of fake accounts, and attempt to make them look
organic.

From these points, it's easy to underestimate the number of actual bot
accounts.

On the other hand, these same methods don't usually control well for a certain
type of Twitter user. There are actually some really obsessive twitter users
who will spend 12+ hours a day active. They typically produce a ton of
content, and a lot of replies. I notice this on celebrity/political accounts
especially. (Apparently people are calling this the 'reply-guy' now)

Those accounts are susceptible to appearing as bots because they deviate far
from what one might imagine the 'average' Twitter user looks like. Speaking
anecdotally, I think this relates closest to politics, and hot topic issues
(Hence the topic in this research). Take a Tweet from the US President for
example. You will notice the same few dozen accounts reply to _every_ Tweet of
his. Some may be bots, but others are most definitely human.

But these often get classified as bots.

If I had to make a guess, I would say the bot detection models fail more often
to account for the true number of bots.

At this point, it's an arms race. Obvious bots are becoming increasingly less
obvious. Overall, I think bots are only going to get better, and it worries me
for the fate of social networks. The thing most frightening is finding an
obvious bot and seeing a large number of organic users interacting with it as
if it were real.

Edit: One more thing I forgot to mention. An increasing number of bots are
getting verified now. I have no idea how the verification process works, but
apparently the botters have figured out how to game it successfully.

~~~
aspenmayer
‘Reply-guy‘ is subjective, and a bit reductionist and has a somewhat negative
connotation. It’s used to describe unwanted attention from a specific person
or a specific type of person, which is also subjective. It goes further than
simply replying a lot and generally being active on Twitter. Not to be a
lexical prescriptivist, just aiming for clarity of description of usage and
NPOV.

[https://twitter.com/sbarolo/status/1036685010869407744?s=20](https://twitter.com/sbarolo/status/1036685010869407744?s=20)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_vie...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view)

~~~
bransonf
Appreciate it. I've just been hearing the term thrown around a lot lately in
context of someone who replies to every single one of someone else's tweets.

~~~
aspenmayer
I would say that’s proper usage based on context.

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newyankee
Although not a fan of exposing real identity on social media i wonder if there
is a mechanism where twitter can acknowledge that an account is real based on
some behind the scenes Zk-snark like validation.

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tiagobraw
why don't Twitter require a capcha before tweeting? it would reduce the number
of bots by a large factor...

it could also have a way for legitimate bots to be registered and easily
identified as such

~~~
TomasEkeli
Irritate all the twitter users every time they want to give twitter free
content? That would kill twitter.

I'm all for it!

------
dannyeei
You cut out the rest of the title! "... Down from the normal 78% which it's
normally at"

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swagatkonchada
Twitter needs to be a lot better at detecting bots.

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roenxi
This is bizarre to the point where there are a bunch of questions raised.

> Among the misinformation disseminated by bot accounts: tweeted conspiracy
> theories about hospitals being filled with mannequins or tweets that
> connected the spread of the coronavirus to 5G wireless towers

> We do know that it looks like it's a propaganda machine, and it definitely
> matches the Russian and Chinese playbooks

What exactly is mental state of the Chinese or Russian propaganda departments
that they would be doing this? How could the Russians possibly benefit from US
citizens aged 60+ dying off at 2-4 times the normal rate? How could the
Russians possibly sow more division amongst Americans vs. the normal state of
American politics? Just this week Pelosi called Trump morbidly obese, and she
is the underdog of childish name-calling in that pairing. How could foreign
agents trolling on twitter top that level of incivility?

And who are the idiots who are looking up random twitter accounts as their
information source?

~~~
pjc50
The foreign intelligence services don't care about left vs. right; they care
about competent vs. incompetent, and destroying the American capacity for
foresight and competent, proportional response. Every time a competent person
says something correct the partisans don't like and gets fired, they win a
little more.

There is no way that Russia could sink the _USS Theodore Roosevelt_ ; their
own carrier practically sank on its own during a recent sortie. They're not
responsible for the mass infection of its crew either - and it may not have
been possible to prevent. But what they _can_ do is make the firing of its
captain a partisan issue, and of course ensure that the acting secretary of
the Navy is operating in an environment where partisan loyalty to Trump is
more important than empathy with the crew, so he gives a morale-destroying
speech.

An early, solid lockdown would have been short and contained the virus. A
relaxed, fragmented one ensures it remains in the population, damaging the
economy longer.

Coronavirus isn't a biological weapon. Partisan stupidity can be weaponised,
though.

~~~
roenxi
That is a totally stupid strategy that relies on a series of connections that
don't make any sense and could just as easily be good decisions for America
that result in the country doing better than normal. And it isn't Russia
making partisan issues partisan - it is the action of the partisans
themselves.

It would be cheaper and more effective to bribe key officials in government.
There was a conspiracy about Jeff Epstein running his paedophile ring in aid
of ... Mossad or the Illuminati or whoever. It would be a bit more expensive
and a lot more effective to make that conspiracy theory a reality rather than
rely on bots to 'sow division' \- whatever that is supposed to do that the
politicians can't manage on their own.

~~~
pjc50
> It would be cheaper and more effective to bribe key officials in government

Undoubtedly that has been going on as well:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Butina#Involvement_in_U....](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Butina#Involvement_in_U.S._politics)
plus some of the people on this fine list:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_investigations_int...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_investigations_into_Trump_and_Russia_\(2019\))

Butina's involvement with the NRA is a perfect example of this; it's the ideal
place to ramp up the partisanship and nobody can question its patriotism.

> could just as easily be good decisions for America that result in the
> country doing better than normal

But they're not. The point of chaos propaganda is to encourage people to make
stupid decisions for the wrong reasons, to focus attention and energy on the
wrong priorities, and to waste time and effort debunking nonsense. Lengthy
investigations into misconduct that go nowhere are also a good waste of time
that prevents governments from achieving anything.

It's not directed at specific outcomes, it's just starting as many fights as
possible and getting people to bind their partisanship to ideas that are
unsupported by evidence. Or supported by fake evidence from fake sources.

It's so cheap because you can use partisans as amplifiers. Just as Stalin
could use American communists as "useful idiots", modern foreign propagandists
can get sincere-but-misguided partisans to fight on their behalf.

------
derivativethrow
The study hasn't been published, so what's the story doing here? Tell me when
I can read an actual paper.

------
edyyhotteb
When in doubt, blame the Russians and Chinese

"We do know that it looks like it's a propaganda machine, and it definitely
matches the Russian and Chinese playbooks, but it would take a tremendous
amount of resources to substantiate that," said Kathleen Carley, a professor
of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University who is conducting a study
into bot-generated coronavirus activity on Twitter that has yet to be
published.

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
Surely you understand why it's ironic to register a new account just to post
this comment.

~~~
buboard
it would be ironic if he/she is a bot. you think so? more likely, they wanted
to avoid looking like straying from the usual groupthink

