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I ran my account through it and got a 0.0 rating, and ran it against my followers, and got similarly low scores for the accounts that I know to be real people (

I ran my account through it and got a 0.0 rating, and ran it against my followers, and got similarly low scores for the accounts that I know to be real people (the highest score for a follower I know to be a person was 0.8). I saw higher scores for either accounts that followed me out of nowhere (I'm not interesting enough to draw real strangers), or for accounts that are run as public profiles (an artist with a public account for their comics). I'm inclined to assume that you likely have either atypical or impersonal twitter habits.

jacquesm 6y ago
Or maybe that's just buggy software.
- freeone3000 6y ago
  It's not buggy: it detects patterns like the majority of posts being retweets instead of new posts; any new post consisting of an image and accompanying text instead of a message or thread; replies being short comments on top responses to popular posts; and a high degree of connectivity to other accounts that are likely bots. False positives are generally curated accounts, corporate accounts, and government accounts (which are really bots with their software in managerial documents); porn accounts; and people who reblog the news but don't really "use" twitter.
  - jacquesm 6y ago
    If it detects my account as a bot I would say it's buggy, because I've done none of that stuff.
    - pixl97 6y ago
      Or you just post a lot of misinformation.
      - jacquesm 6y ago
        Right, yes, that must be it.
      - jeffbee 6y ago
        When I was in the spam blocking business we joked about the problem of the Russian urologist. Somewhere, there must be someone who really is trying to buy Viagra from a Russian e-commerce site. But the other 99.99999% of the time it's spam. Perhaps this person's Twitter suffers a similar fate: all the classification features align with robot traffic, but they aren't a robot.
      - SwanRonson 6y ago
        That would nullify the study entirely since the criteria in the test directly overlaps the criteria of the results. There are multiple people in this thread that have been incorrectly tagged as bots, I’d like to see proper tests done with the software identifying the level of accuracy. It shouldn’t be too much to ask since their entire study is hinged on the accuracy of this software.
  - tetromino_ 6y ago
    And if it's anything like some other naïve bot detection algorithms I've seen, it might be viciously biased against non-English-speakers. To the extent of, say, labelling anyone primarily using Arabic or Cyrillic alphabets as a bot.
    - jacquesm 6y ago
      Or that writes a lot in Dutch. Just the other day a prominent dutch account got auto-blocked on twitter for saying 'Die Rutte toch.', where 'Die' (a pretty common dutch word, which in this case translates as 'That') was mistaken for a threat to our prime minister.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Zuider 6y ago
You may need to test for confirmation bias. I am sure you and people you know are well behaved and courteous on twitter and social media in general, and so would not trigger any alarms. Have you tried the bot-test on more contentious accounts that you know to be human?
- delecti 6y ago
  I just checked a few of the more abrasive people I know, both of whom also do a lot of non-quote Retweets, and both also scored quite low (0.4 and 0.1).
- true_religion 6y ago
  If only this was 2 weeks ago, we would know a certain contentious presidents' account to bot tests... but as of now, why follow anyone who is not well behaved?

jacquesm 6y ago

Or maybe that's just buggy software.

freeone3000 6y ago
It's not buggy: it detects patterns like the majority of posts being retweets instead of new posts; any new post consisting of an image and accompanying text instead of a message or thread; replies being short comments on top responses to popular posts; and a high degree of connectivity to other accounts that are likely bots. False positives are generally curated accounts, corporate accounts, and government accounts (which are really bots with their software in managerial documents); porn accounts; and people who reblog the news but don't really "use" twitter.
- jacquesm 6y ago
  If it detects my account as a bot I would say it's buggy, because I've done none of that stuff.
  - pixl97 6y ago
    Or you just post a lot of misinformation.
    - jacquesm 6y ago
      Right, yes, that must be it.
    - jeffbee 6y ago
      When I was in the spam blocking business we joked about the problem of the Russian urologist. Somewhere, there must be someone who really is trying to buy Viagra from a Russian e-commerce site. But the other 99.99999% of the time it's spam. Perhaps this person's Twitter suffers a similar fate: all the classification features align with robot traffic, but they aren't a robot.
    - SwanRonson 6y ago
      That would nullify the study entirely since the criteria in the test directly overlaps the criteria of the results. There are multiple people in this thread that have been incorrectly tagged as bots, I’d like to see proper tests done with the software identifying the level of accuracy. It shouldn’t be too much to ask since their entire study is hinged on the accuracy of this software.
- tetromino_ 6y ago
  And if it's anything like some other naïve bot detection algorithms I've seen, it might be viciously biased against non-English-speakers. To the extent of, say, labelling anyone primarily using Arabic or Cyrillic alphabets as a bot.
  - jacquesm 6y ago
    Or that writes a lot in Dutch. Just the other day a prominent dutch account got auto-blocked on twitter for saying 'Die Rutte toch.', where 'Die' (a pretty common dutch word, which in this case translates as 'That') was mistaken for a threat to our prime minister.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

Zuider 6y ago

You may need to test for confirmation bias. I am sure you and people you know are well behaved and courteous on twitter and social media in general, and so would not trigger any alarms. Have you tried the bot-test on more contentious accounts that you know to be human?

delecti 6y ago
I just checked a few of the more abrasive people I know, both of whom also do a lot of non-quote Retweets, and both also scored quite low (0.4 and 0.1).
true_religion 6y ago
If only this was 2 weeks ago, we would know a certain contentious presidents' account to bot tests... but as of now, why follow anyone who is not well behaved?