Even as humans are getting better at recognizing bots—social media personas that are just software disguised as people—so these bots are growing more sophisticated and human-like. A new study by researchers at the University of Southern California tracks how—and suggests ramifications for public opinion and the 2020 election.
The study, published in the journal First Monday, looked at 244,699 Twitter accounts that tweeted about politics or the election in both 2016 and 2018. Using Indiana University’s Botometer tool, the researchers determined that 12.6 percent—about 31,000 accounts—were bots, a percentage that aligns with previous research.
A look at the bots’ tweets showed that most of their 2016 activity was, well, bot-like, as in rhythmically mechanical and largely composed of retweets. But in 2018, “bots better aligned with humans’ activity trends, suggesting the hypothesis that some bots have grown more sophisticated.” Moreover, the bots did a lot less retweeting.
But so did humans, the researchers found: “Human users significantly increased the volume of replies, which denotes a growing propensity of humans in discussing (either positively and negatively) their ideas instead of simply re-sharing content generated by other users.”
Bots are bad at replies, for obvious reasons. To make up for it, the bots shifted toward more interactive posts like polls and questions, seeking information on their followers, according to the study.
"Our study further corroborates this idea that there is an arms race between bots and detection algorithms,” wrote lead researcher Emilio Ferrara in a statement. “As social media companies put more efforts to mitigate abuse and stifle automated accounts, bots evolve to mimic h ..
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