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Nearly Half of Twitter Accounts Pushing to Reopen America May be Bots
There has been a huge upswell of Twitter bot activity since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, amplifying medical disinformation and the push to reopen America.
In a new study, the researchers have found that bots may account for between 45 and 60% of Twitter accounts discussing Covid-19. Many of those accounts were created in February and have since been spreading and amplifying misinformation, including false medical advice, conspiracy theories about the origin of the virus, and pushes to end stay-at-home orders and reopen America.
They follow well-worn patterns of coordinated influence campaigns, and their strategy is already working: since the beginning of the crisis, the researchers have observed a greater polarisation in Twitter discourse around the topic.
[...] Unfortunately, there are no easy solutions to this problem. Banning or removing accounts won't work, as more can be spun up for every one that is deleted. Banning accounts that spread inaccurate facts also won't solve anything. "A lot of disinformation is done through innuendo or done through illogical statements, and those are hard to discover," she says.
Carley says researchers, corporations, and the government need to coordinate better to come up with effective policies and practices for tamping this down. "I think we need some kind of general oversight group," she says. "Because no one group can do it alone."
Twitter accounts pushing to reopen America
[Source]: Misinformation and Disinformation Regarding Coronavirus in Social Media
What is your take on this?
Researchers: Nearly Half of Accounts Tweeting about Coronavirus are Likely Bots
Researchers: Nearly Half Of Accounts Tweeting About Coronavirus Are Likely Bots:
Nearly half of the Twitter accounts spreading messages on the social media platform about the coronavirus pandemic are likely bots, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University said Wednesday.
Researchers culled through more than 200 million tweets discussing the virus since January and found that about 45% were sent by accounts that behave more like computerized robots than humans.
It is too early to say conclusively which individuals or groups are behind the bot accounts, but researchers said the tweets appeared aimed at sowing division in America.
"We do know that it looks like it's a propaganda machine, and it definitely matches the Russian and Chinese playbooks, but it would take a tremendous amount of resources to substantiate that," said Kathleen Carley, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University who is conducting a study into bot-generated coronavirus activity on Twitter that has yet to be published.
[..] Reuters reported in March that Russian media have recently deployed a widespread disinformation campaign against the West to worsen the impact of the coronavirus to create panic and distrust.
Efforts to fight back against the spread of false information about COVID-19 come just as the federal government and election security experts keep a watchful eye on the November election.
American intelligence agencies concluded that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election. Experts believe Russian actors will try to influence the 2020 vote as well, including by using social media to amplify their messages.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday May 22 2020, @04:08PM (3 children)
Kind of like how slugs like cabbage. As in not kind of like at all.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by HiThere on Friday May 22 2020, @07:08PM (2 children)
The GP actually has a valid point hidden in his bias. If you grow up with testosterone, your body shapes itself in ways that are beneficial in certain sports. Later changing things doesn't remove, at least not completely, that advantage.
But I don't consider "sports" to be a valid driver of social policy. You might also consider "Hard cases make bad law.". Social rules are always oversimplified versions of some part of reality. This means that inherently some special cases will be treated unfairly. I'm quite happy if the worst that happens is that the "wrong person" wins a sports competition. Usually things are much worse than that. (Unfortunately, they *are* worse, but that's a separate argument.)
Now the problem: Is the GP a bot? How can you tell? He's arguing like one, but so do some people. Fortunately, one doesn't need to decide whether he's a bot. One can grasp the style of argument (using phrasing designed to inflame people on both sides) to decide that he's not worth believing.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 23 2020, @04:58PM (1 child)
I'm not a bot. I'm the writer above AND I'm the one who just gave you a karma point back by modding you underrated.
Here's the deal -- Democrats like to pretend that their positions are driven by science when the reality is, they're just as much full of woowoo as 80s/90s evangelicals were, the difference being that they get their woowoo from different sources. Evangelicals took it from a book of fairy tales compiled in the distant past, Democrats from agenda driven SJW papers devoid of actual content written more recently. What's interesting is that evangelicals will embrace the fact that they are anti-science, while Democrats pretend to be the opposite and then get up on their high horse and condescend, when really, they're equally moronic to those they denigrate.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 24 2020, @03:27AM
There is a difference between actual science vs social science, any virologist does better science than someone trying to argue why a guy should be a girl.
However, science is a mechanism to pursue the truth, not the absolute infallible truth. And that is where many on the left fall back to medievalism: They rejected Jesus and all that jazz and replaced it with a truthier religion, "Science". CNN shows them virologist X who says we must abandon our friends, families and livelihood, then anyone who disagrees must be a heretic. Because they disagree with "The Science".
Even if it is another virologist who somehow got a voice on CNN.