According to a new study from Carnegie Mellon University, researchers have found that bots may account for between 45 and 60% of Twitter accounts discussing covid-19. The normal level of bot involvement for U.S. and foreign elections, natural disasters, and other politicized events is usually between 10 and 20%. MIT Technology Review reports: Many of those accounts were created in February…
Tag: bots
AI can distinguish between bots and humans based on Twitter activity
AI can tell whether a human or a bot is posting on Twitter based on how regularly they post and how much they reply to others, which could help identify fake accounts Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2241327-ai-can-distinguish-between-bots-and-humans-based-on-twitter-activity/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home…
Resellers Using Checkout Bots Are Driving the Nintendo Switch Shortage
During the global coronavirus pandemic, demand for the Nintendo Switch console has skyrocketed and retailers have repeatedly run out of stock. Seizing that opportunity, some price gougers on Amazon and eBay are selling Switches for hundreds of dollars over the recommended retail price. From a report: Like lots of money-making opportunities in online-shopping, many of these resellers aren’t just stumbling upon…
Whatever Happened to Ashley Madison? Affairs in the Time of Coronavirus
An anonymous reader quotes VentureBeat:
Ashley Madison’s tagline has taken on a new ring amid the COVID-19 pandemic — “Life’s short. Have an affair.” And the “married dating” site, used to conduct clandestine affairs, has found itself in the midst of a boom. Despite the fact that it’s harder than ever to physically meet up with a fellow cheater, Ashley Madison is…
Twitter Rewrites Developer Policy To Better Support Academic Research and Use of ‘Good’ Bots
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Twitter today updated its Developer Policy to clarify rules around data usage, including in academic research, as well as its position on bots, among other things. The policy has also been entirely rewritten in an effort to simplify the language used and make it more conversational, Twitter says. The new policy has been…
Microsoft Orchestrates Coordinated Takedown of Necurs Botnet
Microsoft announced today a coordinated takedown of Necurs, one of the largest spam and malware botnets known to date, believed to have infected more than nine million computers worldwide. From a report: The takedown effort came after Microsoft and industry partners broke the Necurs DGA — the botnet’s domain generation algorithm, the component that generates random domain names. Necurs authors register…
‘How Wikipedia’s Volunteers Became the Web’s Best Weapon Against Misinformation’
Fast Company just published a 4,000 appreciation of Wikipedia’s volunteer editors:
[W]hile places like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter struggle to fend off a barrage of false content, with their scattershot mix of policies, fact-checkers, and algorithms, one of the web’s most robust weapons against misinformation is an archaic-looking website written by anyone with an internet connection, and moderated by a largely anonymous…
Will The Next Job Impacted By Automation Be App Development?
Leading CIOs, CTOs and technology executives on the “Forbes Technology Council” just made some predictions for the future:
Now that the business world has seen the power of automation, the question has become, “What’s next?” The members of Forbes Technology Council are constantly looking out for new tech trends, and they believe the next jobs to be impacted by automation might not…
A Quarter of All Tweets About Climate Crisis Produced By Bots
XXongo writes: According to a yet-to-be-published study from Brown University of the origin of 6.5 million tweets about climate and global warming, a quarter of all tweets about climate on an average day are produced by bots, disproportionately skeptical of climate science and action. The Brown University study wasn’t able to identify any individuals or groups behind the battalion of Twitter…
YouTube Gaming’s Most-Watched Videos Are Dominated By Scams and Cheats
An anonymous reader shares a report from Wired: In January, all seven of the most-watched YouTube Gaming channels weren’t run by happy gamers livestreaming the game du jour. They were instead recorded, autoplaying videos advertising videogame cheats and hacks, sometimes attached to sketchy, credential-vacuuming websites, according to one analytics firm. The trend has continued into this month, with five of the…