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Two-Thirds of Tweeted Links Come From Bots, Report Says (cnet.com)

Posted by msmash on from the it's-a-bot-world dept.

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.

2 of 33 comments (clear)

  1. No Shit by darkain · · Score: 3, 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)

  2. Re:Not suprising. by bobstreo · · Score: 4, 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...