Nearly One-in-Three People Debating Alberta Politics on Twitter Are Likely Bots (statistics, rankings)
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The report analyzed 2,995 unique users using the #abpoli and #ableg hashtags on Twitter and found more than 800 accounts were bots or humans amplified by bots, accounting for over half a million tweets (587,000) in a five-week period covering January and February 2019.
Quote:
“They can inflate social media rankings, duping reporters, the public and even parties and politicians into thinking a post has more support than it actually does. For the most part, amplifier bots are just a nuisance, but they can be troubling if media coverage continues to rely uncritically on social media statistics.”
Quote:
”We’ve seen the use of bots during the last federal election,” he continued. “And also we saw it during the Ontario election. There were some allegations about bots during the Ontario PC race.”
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