How robots spread false news: a study illuminates the strategy of tweeting

The bot, an application that performs automated tasks as it's a human, has been widely badociated with spreading false news about the media social. When humans are also known to spread false news, what role does it play? A new study, published in Nature Communications, examines the disproportionate contribution of bots and humans in spreading misinformation on Twitter.

A key finding is that bots amplify unfamiliar content in the first moments of broadcast – they tweet strongly links. to these articles before they become "viral". Robots also target high-level descriptors with answers and mentions. Then, humans take over – vulnerable to this manipulation, they share again the content posted by the bots.

Is it an accidental tendency, or are the bots programmed to behave this way? "Yes, I would say that robots are programmed to promote the spread of misinformation," Filippo Menczer, a professor at Indiana University, professor of computer science and technology, told The Indian Express. # 39; s computer. "The systematic and instantaneous retweet by probable automated accounts can not be a coincidence. I guess these robots are controlled by the same sources that publish misinformation articles. As soon as the article is published and published, the robots retweet it.

The results come from a statistical badysis of 14 million tweets spread over 10 months in 2016-17. These tweets were linked to more than 4 lakh articles – 3.89 articles from 120 sources known to publish infrequent content (13 million tweets) and 15,000 articles from seven sources checking the facts (1 million tweets). The researchers used two tools that they had developed. "Hoaxy" is a system that tracks the spread of unreliable and fact-checking articles on Twitter. The "botometer" is an automatic learning tool for identifying social robots.

Who tweets the most? The more a story was tweeted, the more the tweets were concentrated in the hands of a few accounts, which acted as "super-broadcasters". A botometer test revealed that these "super-spreaders" were more likely to be bots than other accounts sharing a poorly credible content.

Bots tend to be involved at particular times, as shown by the trends in sharing. Once an article is published on Twitter, the robots are probably more present in the first few seconds than later. After that, it is mostly humans who retweet.

In addition, robots often mention influential users in tweets that refer to uncredible content – a single account mentioned in @realDonaldTrump in 19 tweets, each linking to the same "false badertion," the researchers note. One possible explanation for this strategy is that the bots (or their operators) want to give the impression that the uncredible content is widely shared. The study suggests that the hope behind these actions is that these influential users will then redistribute the content to their subscribers, thus reinforcing its credibility.

In a previous study (bit.ly/2zqyu7k), MIT researchers found that while false news is likely to spread faster than true news, false news spreads faster and more widely robots. "False information spreads farther, faster, deeper and more widely than the truth, because it is humans, not robots, who are more likely to spread it," the paper said in March. The new results, according to the authors, complete the previous ones. "[The previous study] claims that robots alone can not explain the virality of false news. In fact, we have also found that most of the propagation is done by humans. However, robots play a critical role in revealing misinformation to humans and encouraging them to share it again. As a result, they work as amplifiers, "said Menczer.

The badyzed tweets were posted between mid-May 2016 and the end of March 2017, during and after the US presidential campaign. "In addition, we have developed a tool called Bot Electioneering Volume that shows how well bot publish articles about mid-term US elections and what they do or tend to promote," he said. declared Menczer.

Is it likely that the same trends will continue for tweets and bots in any country at any time. Menczer said: "It is possible. We receive reports from people from other countries using our tools and claiming that they are observing a similar activity. "