roughly half the twitter accounts pushing to 'reopen america' are bots

[BUtterfield 8 41,818]

As parts of the US have lifted shutdown orders during the COVID-19 pandemic, there's been a fierce argument online about the risks and benefits of reopening. New research suggests that bots have been dominating that debate.

Carnegie Mellon University researchers analyzed over 200 million tweets discussing COVID-19 and related issues since January and found that roughly half the accounts — including 62% of the 1,000 most influential retweeters — appeared to be bots, they said in a report published this week.

That's a far higher level of bot activity than usual, even when it comes to contentious events — the level of bot involvement in discussions about things like US elections or natural disasters is typically 10% to 20%.

The researchers identified bots using artificial-intelligence systems that analyze accounts' frequency of tweets, number of followers, and apparent location.

"Tweeting more frequently than is humanly possible or appearing to be in one country and then another a few hours later is indicative of a bot," Kathleen Carley, a computer-science professor who led the research, said in a release.

https://www.businessinsider.com/nearly-half-of-reopen-america-twitter-accounts-are-bots-report-2020-5?amp&__twitter_impression=true

[AlwaysLoveGaga 4,297]

[DeleteMyAccount 11,881]

This is why social media has become so bad. Even on Instagram literally half the people who make comments or people you interact with are fake accounts run by people who have 20+ accounts. Trust me, I know. I’ve been harassed and targeted so many times.

But Twitter is just as bad. Probably worse. 

[Bt1 5,213]

They say that half of ALL the accounts that talk about the subject are "bots" and then the title says something else. 

Twitter however says that they dont see anything unusual. 

The media really wants to be called fake news. This is worst than Fox News.