There's been a surge in bot activity in the past month in online discussions about reopening America from COVID-19 shutdowns, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University said this week.
The researchers analyzed over 200 million tweets discussing COVID-19 and found that roughly half the accounts were likely bots.
They identified the bots by looking for accounts that tweeted more frequently than humanly possible or whose location appeared to rapidly switch among different countries.
It's unclear who's behind the surge in bot activity or whether they're originating from the US or abroad.
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As parts of the US have lifted shutdown orders during the COVID-19 pandemic, there's been a fierce argument online about the risks and benefits of reopening. New research suggests that bots have been dominating that debate.
Carnegie Mellon University researchers analyzed over 200 million tweets discussing COVID-19 and related issues since January and found that roughly half the accounts — including 62% of the 1,000 most influential retweeters — appeared to be bots, they said in a report published this week.
That's a far higher level of bot activity than usual, even when it comes to contentious events — the level of bot involvement in discussions about things like US elections or natural disasters is typically 10% to 20%.
The researchers identified bots using artificial-intelligence systems that analyze accounts' frequency of tweets, number of followers, and apparent location.
"Tweeting more frequently than is humanly possible or appearing to be in one country and then another a few hours later is indicative of a bot," Kathleen Carley, a computer-science professor who led the research, said in a release.
"When we see a whole bunch of tweets at the same time or back to back, it's like they're timed," Carley added. "We also look for use of the same exact hashtag, or messaging that appears to be copied and pasted from one bot to the next."
The researchers said they found that among tweets about "reopening America," 66% came from accounts that were possibly humans using bot assistants to spread their tweets more widely, while 34% came from bots.
There are a few possible explanations for the surge in bot activity. People may have more time to set up elaborate bot networks during stay-at-home orders, and the availability of botnets for hire has exploded recently. Carley also said that the global nature of the pandemic meant that countries and interest groups were using it to advance political agendas.
However, the researchers did not determine the origins of the bot activity or narrow down whether it was coming from foreign nation-state actors or from within the US.
"Even if someone appears to be from your community, if you don't know them personally, take a closer look, and always go to authoritative or trusted sources for information," Carley said. "Just be very vigilant."
Grammaton485 on May 23rd, 2020 at 22:03 UTC »
EDIT: Links below are NSFW.
I mod a NSFW here on reddit with a different account. Until me and a few others stepped up to help moderate, about 90% of the content was pushed via automatic bots, and this trend also follows on several other NSFW subs. The sub I mod is about 150k users, so think for a minute how much spam that is based on how often people post.
These bots actually post relative (albeit recycled) content. So usually mods have no real reason to look closer, until you realize that the same content is getting recycled every ~2 weeks or so. So upon taking a closer look, you will notice all of these accounts follow the exact same trend, some obvious, some not so obvious.
For starters, almost all of these bots have the same username structure. It's usually something like "FirstnameLastname", like they have a list of hundreds of names and are just stitching them together randomly to make usernames. Almost all of these bots will go straight to /r/FreeKarma4U to build up comment karma. Most Automoderator rules use some form of comment karma or combined karma to block new accounts. This allows the bot to get past a common rule.
The bot then is left idle for anywhere from a week to a month. Another common Automoderator rule is account age, and by leaving the bot idle, it gains both age as well as karma. So as of right now, the bot can get past most common filters, and proceeds to loop through dozens of NSFW subs, posting link after link until it gets site banned. It can churn out hundreds of posts a day.
Some exceptions to the above process I've found. Some bots will 'fake' a comment history. They go around looking for people who just reply to a comment that says "what/wut/wat" and then just repeat the comment above them (I'm also wondering if some of these users posting "what" are also bots). With the size of a site like reddit, it can quickly create a comment history that, at first glance, looks to be pretty normal. But as soon as you investigate any of the comments, you realize they are all just parroting. Here is an example of a bot like this. Note the "FirstnameLastname" style username. If you, as a mod, glance at these comments, you'd think that this user looks real, except click on the context or permalinks for each comment, and you'll see that each comment is a reply to a 'what' comment.
Another strange approach I've seen is using /r/tumblr. I've seen bots make a single comment on a /r/tumblr post, which then somehow amasses like 100-200 karma. The account sits for a bit, then goes on its spam rampage. Not sure if this approach is using bot accounts to upvote these random, innocuous comments, but I've banned a ton of bots that just have a singular comment in /r/tumblr. Here's an example. Rapid-fire pornhub posts, with a single /r/tumblr comment. Again, username is "FirstnameLastname".
EDIT 2: Quick clarification:
More accurate to say it's something like "FirstwordSecondword". Not necessarily a name, though I've seen names used as well as mundane words. This is also not exclusively used; I recall seeing a format like "Firstword-Secondword" a while ago, as well as bots that follow a similar behavior, but not a similar naming structure.
Birddawg65 on May 23rd, 2020 at 18:56 UTC »
Pretty sure half of the internet is bots at this point. The other half is porn.
Patranus on May 23rd, 2020 at 18:52 UTC »
Nearly 1/2 of all *Twitter* accounts are “bots”.
I still don’t understand why people still think Twitter is real life.
Twitter could easily do something about this, but they don’t. Because it creates a perception of reality which in turn gets pushed to the media and generates buzz for Twitter. And the cycle continues.
On a site note. All of the ‘bot detection sites’ crated by “researchers” categorize my Twitter account as being a bot. So....🤷🏼♂️