'Armies' of Twitter Bots Bolster Both The Trump And Clinton Campaigns (technewsworld.com)

An anonymous reader writes: During the first U.S. presidential debate, "automated accounts were tweeting messages with hashtags associated with the candidates. For example, #makeamericagreatagain or #draintheswamp for Trump; #imwithher for Clinton," according to TechNewsWorld. They cite researchers at PoliticalBots.org, who "found that one-third of all tweets using pro-Trump hashtags were created by bots and one-fifth of all Clinton hashtags were generated by automated accounts."

In addition, "Political actors and governments worldwide have begun using bots to manipulate public opinion, choke off debate, and muddy political issues... We know for a fact that Russia, as a state, has sponsored the use of bots for attacking transnational targets... We've had cases in Mexico, Turkey, South Korea and Australia. The problem is that a lot of people don't know bots exist, and that trends on social media or even online polls can be gamed by bots very easily."
After the second presidential debate, "Pro-Clinton bots 'fought back'," reported the BBC, adding that they were still outnumbered by the Trump bots.

Comments

That's OK, Twitter fights back...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's OK, Twitter fights back against the Trump bots by blocking hashtags from trending. When the FBI reopened the investigation into Hillary's emails, several pro-Trump hashtags (naturally) started trending ... briefly. Then Twitter caught on and suppressed them from appearing in the Trending list.

The same does not apply to pro-Hillary hashtags, of course. Despite the fact that Trump hashtags frequently get many times more tweets than Hillary's hashtags (and if you assume those 33%/20% bot percentages are true and adjust for that, still more legitimate tweets), they're frequently blocked from trending.

And Twitter wonders why no one wants to purchase them.

Re:That's OK, Twitter fights back...

[lucm]

Here's what Wikipedia has to say about totalitarianism.

Totalitarian regimes stay in political power through an all-encompassing propaganda campaign that is disseminated through the state-controlled mass media, a single party that is often marked by political repression, personality cultism, control over the economy, regulation and restriction of speech, mass surveillance, and widespread use of terror.

When Twitter, Facebook or "Project Include" embark on a mission to quiet Trump supporters, when they collude to create an anti-Trump narrative, when they support the sabotage of Trump conferences, they're not liberal heroes working for the greater good of America. They're the vanguard of an intolerant movement that threatens democracy. Those people are far more dangerous than Trump.

Re: That's OK, Twitter fights back...

[TapeCutter]

Trump followers are plain old anti-intellectuals, the GOP created them with Fox news. The fact their own angry mob has ripped their party apart is nothing less than poetic justice.