
FeelBetterBot wants you to feel better - abeppu
http://www.aaronbeppu.com/blog/2013-10-30-feel-better-bot-update.html
======
uses
God this makes me want to cry, it's so beautiful, and I'm not being sarcastic.
Seems like snark and chuckling and inside jokes is all we ever see. You made
something that could turn someone's day around, or more. Wonderful.

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lyricalpolymath
awesome project! :) you are a good human being!

Maybe a solution to your banning problem could be to create a federated
"FeelBetter" group of people who would be willing to automatically grant a few
of their tweets. So you build an app that posts a FeelBetter message as one of
the member of the group, in rotation. Kind of Seti@Home but for twitter
tweets. The tweet would relate to the whole group something like: "@Recipient
_hug_ from me and the @FeelBetterBot community"

~~~
abeppu
I like this as a concept. The tricky part is now there are _two_ audiences
that the system has to avoid alienating -- it has to seem friendly and not
creepy to the recipient, and it has to be harmless and non-embarrassing from
the perspective of the 'sender'.

~~~
lyricalpolymath
Well, I imagine it's some kind of app that you allow to post on your behalf.
When you allow it, you know what it will post. If you really want to go the
extra mile you could ask each new member to tick off which messages they don't
feel comfortable sending out before authorizing the app. But I think that is
unnecessary or release 2.0 Moreover if you relate back to the group, the
person can see the larger scope and, maybe, join on the effort.

I'd be more concerned that you get hacked like buffer did a few days ago and
you start sending bad tweets as the members :) but besides that I'd be willing
to "donate" a few of my tweets to this do-good project

~~~
jbl
It could also be as simple as the bot selecting a feel better buddy from a
circular queue and asking that person to send a nice tweet to someone who
needs it. This could either be "handwritten" or via some web app that
authenticates on Twitter and lets you manually send a canned tweet (not unlike
a share button)

~~~
lyricalpolymath
Yes that would be a solution too. But I think it increases the barrier to
action and participation of the members of the group. I don't use that much
Twitter so I would probably miss on the request for help.

I think the automatic bot style is the way to go. The importance is not the
"really thought out message" that someone can send, while rather the low
latency, the immediacy of the reply to those that need it. So timing is more
important. At least this is what I felt from the positive comments you showed
off in your blog post. :)

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quaffapint
Neat idea. It is amazing how often those phrases come up.

It's also interesting that people would find comfort in a random tweeter
passing them a hug. Imagine in real life some strange guy coming up and
hugging you - a bit odd to say the least. Not that a virtual hug is the same
thing, but one would think people would be more often turned off than happy,
but apparently folks on twitter are different than I think they are.

It's a shame twitter keeps banning you - you would think they wouldn't want to
keep wasting their time reviewing it and give you a once and for all yes or
no.

~~~
lem72
I am sure you are right but I gave a hug to a stranger and they held on for
dear life and when I went to say bye they said the most sincere thank you I
have ever heard. Sometimes when you need a hug, you just need a hug.

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sublimino
I put together a similar bot that either responds to a recent #fml, or sends a
pseudo-random account an unsolicited (hopefully) cheer-inducing missive (from
a bank of 200). Runs at a random minute once an hour. Not been banned as yet:

[https://twitter.com/KudosBot‎](https://twitter.com/KudosBot‎)

Previous interactions visible on Topsy:

[http://topsy.com/s?q=Kudosbot](http://topsy.com/s?q=Kudosbot)

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jbl
I love this idea.

Maybe the way around Twitter's bot policies is to use the bot as a
coordination device rather than an auto-responder. How about @ing or DMing
FeelBetterBot followers that person X could use a hug or helpful message?

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twowordbird
As someone who loves Twitter gimmick accounts, I would love to hear some
strategies for keeping them in the clear. Cute project!

~~~
n3rdy
Looks like he may not have had enough variation in his replies.

If you have only 20 different tweets, its easy for them to look like a typical
bot to automated filters. Even if you are posting them slowly, it wouldn't be
a stretch to assume one flag would be a ratio of similar tweets.

The response criteria could be another thing raises a flag. It wouldn't be
difficult for a filter to recognize someone only replying to specific key
phrases.

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spyder
So your next job is to make a bot that do the appeal automatically. :)

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sejje
Need to be able to generate some randomness into the tweets, they get flagged
for being the same tweet over and over.

Also has to send some non-@replies, so it'd work better as a dual-purpose bot
that does some other work too, I guess.

~~~
abeppu
My problem with that explanation is that @StealthMountain and @DBZNappa both
only ever tweet the same message, and to my knowledge both have been running
for quite a while.

~~~
sejje
Yeah, I can't say 100% how accurate that information is. I've also made bots
that do exactly what yours does, but different prompts/responses.

I was inspired by GloatingPig:
[https://twitter.com/GloatingPig](https://twitter.com/GloatingPig)

Anyway, in my research, those are some of the things I found, but I don't have
citations. I think the @replies are the more important half of things, and I
imagine those bigger ones get a pass because they're so popular.

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szidev
this is great. the positive responses you've seen combined with an interesting
article i read a few days ago [1] make me want to write an ML suicide
prevention bot for social media channels. a 20-30% positive response to
suicide prevention would be astounding, and the cost is so small.

[1] [http://www.kernelmag.com/features/report/6451/what-
suicide-n...](http://www.kernelmag.com/features/report/6451/what-suicide-
notes-look-like-in-the-social-media-age/)

~~~
konstruktor
This is a very dangerous project idea. Have you, for one second, considered
that this is not a sales funnel, where the only thing that counts is the
"success rate" at the other end, but something dealing with people in a
crisis? People who may just be considering suicide, and can be tipped in both
ways. For example by a pseudo-empathic bot that tells them the same shit they
hear all day in the US, which sounds nice but is the culturally accepted way
to say "Please either pretend to be happy, or shut up" [1].

Please generously apply the hacker mentality to software, arduinos, knitting,
cooking and art, if you like. Don't be afraid to fail, nothing bad happens
there. Build, test, iterate, enjoy.

There are, however, things in life where the stakes are higher. They require
more knowledge than you can quickly gather with a Google search, and, you
know, professionalism. Healthcare is one of these topics.

[1] As this seems to be a bit of a cultural blind spot for people in the US, I
highly recommend [http://www.amazon.com/Bright-Sided-Positive-Thinking-
Undermi...](http://www.amazon.com/Bright-Sided-Positive-Thinking-Undermining-
America/dp/0312658850)

~~~
szidev
what the fuck merited this response? i've read and re-read my comment, and i
can't seem to find anything that would suggest that i'm seeing people simply
as numbers here. are you honestly so jaded and cynical that you think someone
talking about suicide prevention doesn't realize there is a human element to
the matter?

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docmarionum1
I just happened to start my own gag @reply bot last night,
[https://twitter.com/AssHobby](https://twitter.com/AssHobby), and quickly hit
this same problem. I tried to get clarification on what I was doing that was
different than a bot like StealthMountain but of course just got a canned
response that answered nothing. It really can't be anything other than
followers count or special exemptions. Maybe drastically reducing the
frequency such as sublimino is doing would help keep it off their radar. But a
definitive answer would be nice.

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olsonsd
Awesome project! Any chance you'd be interesting in publishing the code for
the bot so we could make variations of happybots to spread the <3 and not-so-
subtly protest the suspension of said happybots?

~~~
abeppu
The code is here :
[https://gist.github.com/abeppu/6958565](https://gist.github.com/abeppu/6958565)

(also linked from the article text.)

I'm fine with other people making lots of happybots. I just hope no one would
adapt the code to, say, harass or bully people who are already feeling shitty.

~~~
furyofantares
[https://twitter.com/HaveAUnicodeBot](https://twitter.com/HaveAUnicodeBot) is
using your code

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postjock
Try using a name that doesn't include the word "BOT" in it. Given that your
account is suspended repeatedly, and that you alter the frequency of the
tweets, consider what you haven't yet changed.

If changing the name works (i.e. create a new account), then you have
something else to write about: Twitter doesn't care if you spam people with
tweets, as long as you are concealing the fact that its spam!

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chacham15
Great idea. I like the motivation :)

I just had an idea for Twitter though. Twitter should make it so that bots get
banned after a time proportional to the number of followers they have.
Essentially this says: if people like what the bot is producing then it should
need less manual review. Of course, you'd need to make sure that those are
real people who follow it, but I dont think that that should be too difficult.

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QuasiAlon
Am I the only one that was reminded of Dr. SBAITSO ?
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Sbaitso](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Sbaitso)
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sV3pYZZ2jEw](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sV3pYZZ2jEw)

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ogreyonder
Son of a... SPOILER ALERT for anyone watching Twin Peaks.

I find it highly ironic that OP's example mocking a "bot designed to actively
try to ruin people's evening" just ruined my evening.

Other than that, though, this does seem like a cool project and I can't
imagine why Twitter keeps banning you.

~~~
abeppu
Ok, sorry I'll change that. I figured the chances that a random reader would
have started, but not finished a TV series from 22 years ago would be pretty
slim (whereas @EnjoyTheFilm specifically targeted those people) ... but
apparently not. My bad.

Updated : spoiler removed; just the reaction is shown now. Again, my
apologies.

~~~
ogreyonder
Haha well, if you put it that way now I do look foolish! I mean, I can count
the number of people I know who watch Twin Peaks on 1 hand so yeah, you
should've been safe.

But I'm sure you can imagine my surprise at reading Laura Palmer and thinking,
"why do I know that name..."

I'm not upset or anything so don't feel bad! I was pretty amused at the irony,
actually. The 'ruined my evening' part was more for comedic effect.

That said, if anyone tells me another spoiler from The Wheel of Time for me...
god help them. I'm looking at you, Wikipedia.

~~~
iron_ball
Spoiler: there are like six books where _nothing ever happens at all ever_.
Enjoy!

------
abeppu
Late this afternoon, I started @FeelBetterBot back up (I had kept it 'off' for
most of the day, while lots of people were looking at it) ... and it lasted
less than 3 hours before getting shut down again.

~~~
tricolon
A while ago I made a Twitter bot
([https://twitter.com/HereHaveAKitty](https://twitter.com/HereHaveAKitty))
with a friend. We used the face.com API to detect sad faces in photos in
tweets (as well as ASCII emoticons) and reply with a photo of a kitten. It
lasted about as long as yours before being suspended. We tried again
([https://twitter.com/KittenDelivery](https://twitter.com/KittenDelivery)) but
that too was shut down.

~~~
abeppu
That's adorable! Except the part where KittenDelivery tweeted some hairless
kittens -- those are creepy. Anyway, my bot has (so far) always been
unsuspended upon appeal, but sometimes it takes 3-12 hours or something.

------
pm
Of all the things in the article, the guy's reaction to @EnjoyTheFilm is the
thing making me chuckle. As much as I support this idea, I really can't help
but laugh at someone's petty misfortune.

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DanBC
"Did you mean sneak peeks?" would be a lot more effective if it went the other
way round, finding people who had correctly used "sneak peeks" and asking if
they'd meant "sneak peaks".

One of my all time favourite troll accounts was "The EyeBrow Thief". They went
around LiveJournal, finding images of people, then photoshopping the eyebrows
off and reposting the image.
[http://web.archive.org/web/20110815234132/http://eyebrow-
thi...](http://web.archive.org/web/20110815234132/http://eyebrow-
thief.livejournal.com/)

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axus
Robots designed for hugging might go too far:
[http://pbfcomics.com/115/](http://pbfcomics.com/115/)

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brown9-2
Lovely idea.

Seems like twitter has already suspended the account.

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tomphoolery
Awesome! It was a pleasure to read your very compact source code, BTW.

edit: Can we rename this bot "The Feels Good Man"? ;)

~~~
GhotiFish
can not find the source code. Link?

nevermind. here it is:
[https://gist.github.com/abeppu/6958565](https://gist.github.com/abeppu/6958565)

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evan_
Sounds like this guy missed the memo that @horse_ebooks was a pair of artists
in NYC.

~~~
MartinCron
It's just more fun to believe that @horse_ebooks was a bot.

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GhotiFish
awesome, in the classical sense of the word. Something that evokes awe.

awwwwwwwww.

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rubyfan
This made my day

