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I recently watched a talk from 34c3 (chaos computer club conference) which were held at the end of last year about Twitter bots, their existence and their detec

I recently watched a talk from 34c3 (chaos computer club conference) which were held at the end of last year about Twitter bots, their existence and their detection. The speaker couldn't find a lot of bots that were cited in studies and that their methodology were somewhat arbitrary. Definitely worth a watch: https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-9268-social_bots_fake_news_und_filterblasen https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-9268-social_bots_fake_news_und_f... (The video is German but there should be a translated version of it on the site)

shaki-dora 9y ago
I believe there is a bit of confusion in the public discussion, mostly of the 2016 election: While “bots” featured large in initial discussions, the details that have emerged since, especially in the recent indictment, actually point at software-assisted humans as the main avenue for these activities. I believe the “bot” monicker because (a) it’s how most people would tackle the task, perhaps ignoring the cheap labor pool this shadowy PR operation had access to, and (b) the bot-like behavior exhibited by many of these accounts, which was actually a result of not being native speakers, following a script, and having no deeper knowledge of politics and culture to fall back on.