That Persuasive Tweet Could Be from a Sneaky Bot

Although Twitter monitors tweet traffic to weed out “socialbots,” these automated accounts are hard to detect as they tweet their preprogrammed, synthetic messages. After a team led by Carlos Freitas of the Federal University of Minas Gerais in Brazil set 120 socialbots loose, they not only infiltrated social groups but became influential in them; 20% picked up 100 or more followers, while only 38 were suspended by Twitter. MIT Technology Review says the concern is that bots could be designed to influence opinions, such as about politics.