Two-Thirds of Tweeted Links Come From Bots, Report Says (cnet.com) 33
We already know bots have a significant presence on Twitter. But a report published Monday by the Pew Research Center suggests automated accounts are more prevalent than we may previously have thought. From a report: Pew estimates that two-thirds, or about 66 percent, of the links shared on Twitter come from bots rather than people. The research specifically focused on the 2,315 most popular websites and over 1 million tweets sent between July 27 and Sept. 11, 2017.
Not suprising. (Score:2)
These sites have algorithms that benefit higher users. So a Bot will just post stuff, and perhaps get the usage that benefits them.
Re: (Score:3)
These sites have algorithms that benefit higher users. So a Bot will just post stuff, and perhaps get the usage that benefits them.
I never joined twitter, but I'm pretty sure there are bots with more followers than anyone who isn't posting nudes or bikini pics.
Re:Not suprising. (Score:4, Insightful)
Nah. There are lots of famous people who don't post nudes who have tons of followers. Obama, for example, has 102 million followers and I'm quite sure he's never posted nudes.
Re:Not suprising. (Score:5, Informative)
Nah. There are lots of famous people who don't post nudes who have tons of followers. Obama, for example, has 102 million followers and I'm quite sure he's never posted nudes.
You have to wonder how many of those followers are democratic party bots?
There are famous people on twitter, some (maybe most) of them aren't the actual people, just their PR teams, or interns...
Re: (Score:2)
There are famous people on twitter, some (maybe most) of them aren't the actual people, just their PR teams, or interns...
I follow DJT; he's the only reason I have a Twitter account. He SHOULD have a team managing his Tweets, but I'm quite confident that many come straight from him.
Re: (Score:3)
A PR team would at least use a spell checker, so I believe you're correct.
Re:Not suprising. (Score:4, Interesting)
At least some are bots. You can't get any significant number of followers without bots slipping in. There are only 20 people following me (most are friends or bands I know members of) but one is almost certainly a bot that only ran for one day last August, tweeting 5 times and following 668 other people, before going silent. God only knows what the person behind it was trying to accomplish.
Still, over 60 million people voted for Obama in each election, so a large chunk of the 100 million followers are likely to be real.
As far as who runs his account? Probably managed by a PR person, but at least some of the content is provided by Obama. The back and forth between him and George W Bush about NCAA brackets was amusingly mundane. I don't think a PR team would have been able to resist trying to make it more interesting.
No Shit (Score:4, Informative)
Just file this one under "NO FUCKING SHIT" - Twitter is the modern day RSS feed. Slashdot has a "bot" account as well. Every new article posted to the front page is shared w/ link to their Twitter feed. Cross-posting tools do the same, too (such as Facebook, Instagram, and anything that shared an image before Twitter allowed images directly)
Re: (Score:1)
Just file parent's reply under "DUMB FUCKING SHIT" - the point is that most social media users likely don't appreciate the prevalence of automated "users." With RSS feeds, the user specifically chooses what content is fed to them. With social media, "feeds" can be manipulated using bots designed to spread a particular message with the user remaining completely oblivious. Users are pretty much dumb and lazy so the real point is should we allow a system to take advantage of this?
Re: (Score:2)
"most social media users likely don't appreciate the prevalence of automated "users."
Sheep also don't care for the shepherd's dogs, but nobody ever asks the sheep.
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Funny, I actually highly appreciate the bots--as well as the ones that give me something approximating RSS feeds (which I can't easily get otherwise anymore), there's also a couple I follow that are just status bots, that tweet out if a site or server is up, and sometimes also when they're back up. (At least, I hope they're bots, because it would be a bit of a thankless job to stick an actual human with.)
All of these, however, are pretty honest about what they are. The bots that are trying to fake being p
Re: (Score:2)
It's true that the RSS feed single account twitter feed would account as a bot and it could muddle the discussion but it would be odd if Pew would mess up the analysis by including these in the 'scattergun bot' group. This page says the verified accounts from news sites do not affect the results because their contribution is insignificant http://www.pewinternet.org/201... [pewinternet.org]
It's OK! (Score:3)
That is fine, because only bots subscribe and read those feeds anyway.
Re: (Score:2)
That is fine, because only bots subscribe and read those feeds anyway.
Twitter is a primitive form of AI. Musk might be right.
Do humans use Twitter? (Score:2, Interesting)
I thought Twitter was 100% bots. All I have ever done with Twitter is make it so that stuff from my employers' CMS gets posted to it. Theoretically we do this because someone thinks that some humans out there might be reading our twits, but not a single person in the company said they read Twitter.
Not a single person in the company. But our bot posts.
Twitter: For Bots, By Bots (Score:2)
Trending on twitter is news worthy (Score:4, Interesting)
Many of the traditional news outlets cover things that are trending on twitter. This means that trending twitter subjects leads to news coverage. If twitter is mostly bots, trending on twitter is meaningless and news is doing us a disservice by covering it.
Why do the news organizations rely on twitter? One reason is that it a great way to get quotes on a subject. John Jones "calls for more investigation". Previously, it could take many phone calls to get a good quote. With twitter you can sort through hundreds of potential quotes until you find one that makes your point.
Re: (Score:2)
"Many of the traditional news outlets cover things that are trending on twitter. "
Their bots do the trending and direct users to their main business: You watching their ads.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
The Solution is Simple (Score:1)