3 ms·

How about these bots? @newsyc250 @newsyc100 @newsyc50 @newsyc20 Why should these bot accounts be expelled? I just love the way some bot accounts are so useful

How about these bots? @newsyc250 @newsyc100 @newsyc50 @newsyc20 Why should these bot accounts be expelled? I just love the way some bot accounts are so useful. In fact, following the above mentioned bot accounts, gives you just enough number of Hacker News posts that you want to see, based on how popular they are. Similarly, there can be many bad bot accounts, but differentiating those from good bot accounts may not be an easy task, and bound to fail with false negatives and false positives.

codedokode 9y ago
The article says not about bots generally but about the bots that (allegedly) were controlled by Russia and (allegedly) were posting pro-Trump tweets and (allegedly) could help him to win the elections. But from a legal point of view, is Twitter obliged to find and ban such bots? I don't think so. Marking them as bots would be a good idea though.
- sli 9y ago
  > Marking them as bots would be a good idea though. I agree. I like how Telegram does bots. They have first class support for bots, and the separation between real user and bot is extremely clear. You have to specifically create a bot account, and bots have certain restrictions that users don't have (e.g. they cannot initiate a conversation themselves). Of course, that assumes the bot is set up as intended. One could masquerade a bot as a real user if they were clever enough and had a spare phone number, presumably. I've not tried it, but I'm going to assume it's possible, since you can very well write your own Telegram client.
- calvinbhai 9y ago
  True. I’d like bot accounts to be marked as such. It’s annoyingly to see bot accounts as real accounts, folllowing 5k or 10k + accounts following or liking my tweet because of a specific keyword. If twitter can fix that, it’ll be awesome.

3 ms·

How about these bots? @newsyc250 @newsyc100 @newsyc50 @newsyc20 Why should these bot accounts be expelled? I just love the way some bot accounts are so useful

by calvinbhai 9y ago

codedokode 9y ago
The article says not about bots generally but about the bots that (allegedly) were controlled by Russia and (allegedly) were posting pro-Trump tweets and (allegedly) could help him to win the elections. But from a legal point of view, is Twitter obliged to find and ban such bots? I don't think so. Marking them as bots would be a good idea though.
- sli 9y ago
  > Marking them as bots would be a good idea though. I agree. I like how Telegram does bots. They have first class support for bots, and the separation between real user and bot is extremely clear. You have to specifically create a bot account, and bots have certain restrictions that users don't have (e.g. they cannot initiate a conversation themselves). Of course, that assumes the bot is set up as intended. One could masquerade a bot as a real user if they were clever enough and had a spare phone number, presumably. I've not tried it, but I'm going to assume it's possible, since you can very well write your own Telegram client.
- calvinbhai 9y ago
  True. I’d like bot accounts to be marked as such. It’s annoyingly to see bot accounts as real accounts, folllowing 5k or 10k + accounts following or liking my tweet because of a specific keyword. If twitter can fix that, it’ll be awesome.