Posted on 07/09/2022 8:50:53 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
In the wake of Elon Musk’s decision to pull out of his Twitter purchase because of the social media giant’s hesitation to share information on bot accounts, one has to wonder, what are they anyway? What do they do, and why are they so important that Hillary Clinton partially blamed her 2016 election loss on Russian bots?
In late April, Twitter estimated that fake accounts and spam “accounted for less than 5 percent of its daily active users in the fourth quarter of 2021.” However, with a user base of at least 330 million, that’s still an awful lot of non-human accounts (16.5 million for the math-challenged). Musk thinks the number is far higher, and that Twitter refuses to tell the truth.
Elon Musk says he’s not buying Twitter for $44 billion because of all the bots & fake accounts. Twitter says it’s suing him to compel purchase. I’d bet on a lower purchase price being negotiated before all is done here.
— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) July 8, 2022
“Bot” obviously derives from the word “robot,” and can also be referred to as a fake account, a spam account, a spambot, or a Twitterbot. Each one might differ slightly in its name and in its function, but essentially it comes down to the same thing: they’re little robots. These robots, though, don’t take on physical form—they’re computer codes engineered to interact on social media as if they’re real people. It’s not actually a suburban hottie, sipping white wine, who’s tweeting you; it’s a Russian dude in his underwear who’s simultaneously tweeting to 5,000 other people.
The Washington Post describes the scourge:
On Twitter, bots are automated accounts that can do the same things as real human beings: send out tweets, follow other users, and like and retweet postings by others. However, spam bots use these actions to engage in deceptive, harmful and annoying activity.
For instance, a commercial bot might keep sending out tweets disguised as coming from a real person, but are actually posted by a computer. The tweets might promise free giveaways or fabulous life-changing deals, but in reality, they inevitably lead to a scam trying to separate you from your money.
Here’s something that might surprise you: bots are allowed by Twitter, but creators have to indicate when accounts are automated. “@tinycarebot” is allowed because it’s an automated Twitter reminder service; there’s nothing pernicious about it. Spam bots, however, which continually spit out unwanted information, are not permitted. Users are encouraged to report such accounts, and Twitter will shut them down.
Another use for bots is for influencers and celebrities to gain huge followings. You can sometimes spot those by noticing the “follower-to-likes” ratio: if an account has hundreds of thousands of followers, but only a few likes per tweet, you can bet many of those followers are from fake accounts and might have been paid for.
Sometimes high-profile users don’t actively recruit fake followers, they just appear. One estimate indicates that Elon Musk himself has around 23 percent fake fans, although Joe Biden handily beats him in the department—Newsweek claims that almost half of his tens of millions of devotees are bots.
In elections, bots can tweet out literally millions of fake-news spam messages, claiming everything from “Hillary is an Alien” to “Trump is actually a God from Asgard.” I personally find it hard to believe that such garbage would influence many people, but many experts disagree with me on that one.
Here are some bots in action. Definitely watch the video; it’s pretty amazing.
🧵Yesterday, an online media outlet published an article about Elon Musk @elonmusk personal life and a person close to him. These articles generated thousands of harassment, insults by some users and malicious bots. Watch the video
Here is what happened. A thread 👇🏻 pic.twitter.com/ukyGydQWxj
— Andrea Stroppa (@Andst7) July 8, 2022
Elon responded to this thread on Twitter Friday, writing, “Interesting. Who is behind the bot attack?”
Bots, spam emails, automated computerized phone calls, Nigerian inheritance scams, and the rest are the bane of our online existence. Musk, however, isn’t just concerned that they’re annoying—he’s concerned that bots and fake accounts lower the value of Twitter, and therefore the price he negotiated to buy the company is too high. They lower the value because if a large percentage of Twitter users are robots, that’s fewer real people to advertise to–and if the truth ever got out, advertisers would refuse to pay as much as they’re paying now. Musk also worries that bots and fake accounts diminish the user experience and that he will never get the growth he wants if users don’t like the way the platform works.
Hard to believe, but it looks like the tiny invisible demons may have helped kill one of the largest tech deals of the decade.
Little robots that post positive or negative comments according as to how they are programmed. They can attack or praise a person to shape the public’s opinion about someone.
This is probably negotiation.
Musk will end up buying twitter.
For a lot less than $44B.
Yup. My realtor told me that after the melt down of 2008, real estate here in Phoenix was being sold off for a song. Some savvy investors would offer full price, get the seller excited, and then wait for the bank to refuse carry a mortgage for the asking price. The banks determined what the houses could sell for. The buyers in those cases knew what would happen.
Thanks for that image.
twitter will never go to discovery
That's a very perceptive remark!
You are obviously a very intelligent person!
I'm also glad to hear that you, too, have had excellent results, trading with Marco Williams.
I opened up an account with Marco Williams six weeks ago, and have already almost doubled my money.
Lots of my friends are also very happy with Marco Williams.
You are obviously a very intelligent person, to do business with Marco Williams!
That's a very perceptive remark!
Regards,
You are correct.
90% of Twitter’s revenues are from advertisers.
Of Biden’s 40 million Twitter followers, it was reported during Musk’s reviews, half were bots.
I have never seen a spam tweet.
Same here. Never been on Twitter.
The unwillingness by management to share information on important components (bots in this case) is tantamount to possible financial malfeasance on the part of management (discouragement of bids that might favor the stockholders).
In other words, this is a public company saying to potential buyers that "you can make public bids for this company but you can't take a look at [important parts of] our operations until you close the purchase." Much akin to Nancy Pelosi saying "you have to pass the bill to see what's in it."
Black Lives Matter was a Russian bot creation on Facebook. Yes, the Russian meddling on Facebook created more anti-Clinton than anti-Trump posts. But their anti-Clinton posts were so bizarre, often apocalyptic wierdness, unless attacking from the Left (pro-Bernie, BLM, pro-gay), in which case they, like the anti-Trump posts, were lapped up by crazy by the insane Left which believed absolutely anything they were told.
I am not a smart man. And I have no idea who this Marco Williams dude is. Sorry to disappoint you. I learned about bots from YouTube in which an Amber Heard person attacked different people commenting on the AH/JD trial.
They don't bother to mention the biggest social media influencer of all - the U.S. Government, or some CIA/Mockingbird type operation thereof. It might be a wholly self funded ngo/contractor black op by now (Rand Corp?) pushing the propaganda 24/7. But journalists aren't going to investigate the folks who are also spoon feeding them their talking points.
Marco Williams is a documentary filmmaker and professor of film production at Northwestern University. His films have received several awards, including the Gotham Documentary Achievement Award for Two Towns of Jasper and he has been nominated three times for the Sundance Film Festival grand jury prize.
Well, that’s wonderful. So I’m cornfused. What’s that got to do with me?
Sorry if my attempt at parodying typical bot "come-ons" fell flat.
One occasionally encounters comments like that in public message boards - someone agreeing with you, flattering you, and then referencing some online trader with whom they have great success. The dead give-away is that, suddenly, lots of other bots will then post additional comments agreeing with the initial bot. Pretty obvious to me that it's a "set-up," but I guess that it must work with some people.
I once read, long ago, a comment about how paper-thin (read: easy to spot) these scams are - but someone then explained that they are intentionally obvious, because the scammers are targeting the absolutely stupidest (and/or greediest) people they can possibly find. If the potential mark starts by asking probing question, and expressing doubts, then the scammers will immediately drop them. The scammers want people who are "true believers" (i.e., unquestioning fools). By intentionally including, e.g., blatant misspellings early on in their "come-ons," they immediately filter out people with better than eighth-grade educations.
Regards,
Maybe you have simply never recognized a spam tweet.
Regards,
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