Posted on 11/03/2012 11:25:41 PM PDT by Nachum
WASHINGTON — As US election day approaches, "Twitter bombs" are expected to fly as part of efforts to swing votes in a close race.
The "bombs," a form of spam, are unsolicited Twitter responses which are retweeted with the help of automated computer programs, or "bots", to get maximum distribution.
These are examples of cyber tricks which could surface in the final days of the US election campaign from candidates or, more likely, outside groups supporting a candidate or cause.
The "bomb" technique is as old as Twitter, and is similar to e-mail spam. Both can be used for commercial or political causes.
Experts say it leads those receiving the messages to believe there is a groundswell, when in fact, the trend is being manipulated by those generating the message.
"This is a new way of propagating information or misinformation," said Panagiotis Metaxas, a Wellesley College computer scientist who studies social media.
"I suspect this will happen close to the final days of the election. With social media you can propagate information or misinformation fast."
-- Bomb campaigns as late game-changers --
Metaxas, who co-authored a report on the subject in Science Magazine, said that even though falsehoods can be debunked, "if you launch it close enough to the election you can keep enough confusion to last a couple of days."
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Not being a a twit I don’t use twitter
Too bad, cuz it’s killing this place
Im totally protected from twitter bombs and bots...btw, whats a twitter?
A Michael Tritter fan with a speech defect.
I decided to join twitter a couple of days ago to see what it’s about and I’ve seen these bombs but they are mostly people selling sex I think.
There is a #Benghazi (thread) where people are bombing things like “this is so funny I laughed till I fell down” with a link. This is about 25% of the tweets I would say and I would never click on one but the pictures of the tweeters are all scantilly dressed women. Which is why I think it’s about selling sex of some kind.
Nothing to worry about. Sean Hannity’s Let Not Your Heart Be Troubled Twitter Army will protect us.
Not likely to sway many - already reached the point of saturation.
LLS
Sorry, I did not catch the drift of your reply. Can you rephrase that please?
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