Twitter bots played 'disproportionate' role in 2016 US polls: Study

Automated accounts or bots played a disproportionate role in spreading misinformation online during the 2016 US presidential polls revealed an analysis of 14 million messages and four lakh articles shared on TwitterResearchers from the Indiana University in the US identified a mere six per cent of Twitter accounts that acted as bots and were enough to spread 31 per cent of the low credibility information on the networkThese accounts were also responsible for 34 per cent of all articles shared from low credibility sourcesThis study finds that bots significantly contribute to the spread of misinformation online as well as shows how quickly these messages can spread said lead author Filippo Menczer Professor at the varsityThe analysis published in the journal Nature Communications also revealed that bots amplify a messages volume and visibility until its more likely to be shared broadly despite only representing a small fraction of the accounts that spread viral messagesPeople tend to put greater trust in messages that appear to originate from many people added coauthor Giovanni Luca Ciampaglia an assistant research scientist from the varsityBots prey upon this trust by making messages seem so popular that real people are tricked into spreading their messages for them he notedOther tactics for spreading misinformation included amplifying a single tweet potentially controlled by a human operator across hundreds of automated retweets repeating links in recurring posts and targeting highly influential accountsThe team also ran an experiment inside a simulated version of Twitter and found that the deletion of 10 per cent of the accounts appearing to be bots resulted in a major drop in the number of stories from low credibility sources in the networkThis experiment suggests that the elimination of bots from social networks would significantly reduce the amount of misinformation on these networks Menczer saidAlthough their analysis focused on Twitter the researchers stressed that other social networks such as Snapchat and WhatsApp are also vulnerable to manipulationTo combat misinformation companies should improve algorithms to automatically detect bots and add a human in the loop to reduce automated messages in the system For example users might be required to complete a Captcha to send a message they suggestedCatch up on all the latest Crime National International and Hatke news here Also download the new midday Android and iOS apps to get the latest updatesThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Except for the change in the headline the story has been provided ASIS AS AVAILABLE without any verification or editing from our side Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever