One in seven Twitter accounts may be nothing more than software 'bots'

Researchers estimation that 1 successful 7 Twitter accounts whitethorn beryllium thing much than bundle "bots" alternatively than individuals oregon organizations utilizing the microblogging level successful an integrated manner. A thematic reappraisal of this concern is offered by a squad from India successful the International Journal of Internet Technology and Secured Transactions.

Rosario Gilmary, Akila Venkatesan, and Govindasamy Vaiyapuri of Pondicherry Engineering College explicate however Twitter bots exploit the service's API (application programming interface) to transportation retired tasks specified arsenic "mentions," "likes," "retweets," and posting updates themselves often exploiting trending topics and "hashtags." Some bots are created for wholly guiltless purposes by users but often the bots are created to artificially boost oregon denigrate the enactment of other, morganatic accounts, to dispersed disinformation, propaganda and different problematic content, and adjacent to dispersed malware done phishing links embedded successful a tweet.

It is important for the service provider and users to beryllium alert of the beingness of malicious and unwanted Twitter bots and fake accounts. As such, a reappraisal is precise timely and mightiness assistance beforehand the improvement of tools to observe these bots. The squad discusses successful immoderate item the quality and characteristics of Twitter bots wrong the pursuing categories based connected their activity: fake followers, societal spambots, contented polluters, and cyborgs. Within the societal spambot category, they besides place 2 different categories of bot: persuasive sockpuppets and progressive sockpuppets.

Within the societal bot group, we spot the wide occupation of misinformation and propaganda being dispersed by 3rd parties with the malicious intent to power unwitting users successful their opinions and voting volition successful governmental elections and referenda. It is these Twitter bots that person the imaginable to person the astir lasting and negative effects connected nine particularly erstwhile those controlling the bots are rogue actors and adjacent authorities actors. The squad reports that betwixt 9 and 15 percent of Twitter accounts are estimated to beryllium societal bots. Worryingly, those who power these bots are good alert of the existent detection techniques and germinate amended camouflage for their activities successful effect to antiaircraft measures taken by users and the work provider. It is possibly an inappropriate cliché to picture the work supplier attempts to observe bots and the adaptive bot improvement that is ongoing arsenic a crippled of "cat and mouse," possibly it is simply a crippled of "cat and bird" fixed the sanction of the work supplier and its avian iconography. Either way, the existent reappraisal points to caller ways successful which Twitter mightiness place bots connected its strategy and artifact oregon region them from the platform.

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More information: Rosario Gilmary et al, Discovering societal bots connected Twitter: a thematic review, International Journal of Internet Technology and Secured Transactions (2021). DOI: 10.1504/IJITST.2021.116748