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.
to sway the digital platform conversation about candidates while exploiting Twitter's algorithms to maximize their reach.
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.
“McConnell... Traitor!” wrote one of the accounts, in response to an article in a conservative publication about GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell, one of several Republican critics of Trump targeted by the network. The same network of accounts shared overwhelmingly positive content about Trump and contributed to an overall false picture of his support online, researchers found.
When a human user sees a hashtag or piece of content from a bot and reposts it, they're doing the network's job for it, and also sending a signal to Twitter's algorithms to boost the spread of the content further.
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