Researchers have uncovered a network of tens of thousands of fake Twitter accounts created to support former President Donald Trump and attack his critics and potential rivals.
governor and U.N. ambassador who is challenging her onetime boss for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.the bots aggressively suggested that the Florida governor couldn't beat Trump, but would be a great running mate.
Bots, as they are commonly called, are fake, automated accounts that became notoriously well-known after Russia employed them in an effort to meddle in the 2016 election. While big tech companies have improved their detection of fake accounts, the network identified by Cyabra shows they remain a potent force in shaping online political discussion.
One way of gauging the impact of bots is to measure the percentage of posts about any given topic generated by accounts that appear to be fake. The percentage for typical online debates is often in the low single digits. Twitter itself has said that less than 5% of its active daily users are fake or spam accounts.When Cyabra researchers examined negative posts about specific Trump critics, however, they found far higher levels of inauthenticity.
"Our understanding of what is mainstream Republican sentiment for 2024 is being manipulated by the prevalence of bots online," the Cyabra researchers concluded. "Bots absolutely do impact the flow of information," Woolley said. "They're built to manufacture the illusion of popularity. Repetition is the core weapon of propaganda and bots are really good at repetition. They're really good at getting information in front of people's eyeballs."
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