If you’ve read a recent social media posting that offers some questionable advice or dubious news about COVID-19, you’re not alone. In fact, users on Twitter have, on average, about a 50 percent chance of reading information regarding the disease that most likely came from a bot, according to findings from a recent study.
Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University delved into 200 million tweets that have been authored since January about coronavirus. Of those examined, 45 percent were issued out by accounts that behaved more like “bots” than human users of the social media site.
Bots are “automated user accounts that interact with Twitter using an application programming interface” to tweet, retweet and even message human users online, according to consumer software company Symantec. They can sometimes be used for good reasons — such as providing information on weather or earthquakes to relevant users — but they can be used for iniquitous purposes, too, like interfering in the political process or waging disinformation campaigns on topics their developers want to promote. Some research suggests that as many as 15 percent of all users on Twitter are actually bots.
The team of Carnegie Mellon researchers said it was too soon to say who was behind the bots’ disinformation campaign, but the content in the tweets themselves seem to suggest the motivation was to create division among American users on Twitter — similar to what happened during the 2016 presidential campaign.
The bots appear to have disseminated at least 100 different false storylines about coronavirus that are being spread online, the researchers concluded. These include conspiracy theories, like that hospitals are putting mannequins in hospital beds to make the crisis appear more damaging than it is, or that 5G cell towers spread the disease, both claims that are patently false.
According to the researchers, the bot activity is two times higher than what they predicted it would be, based on previous analyses of bot behavior during past disasters, crises and elections.
In February, a separate analysis of activity from Bot Sentinel found that bots were spreading a variety of false claims about the disease, including that China intentionally created the virus or was trying to weaponize it before it spread, or that Democrats were overstating the concern about COVID-19 in order to make President Donald Trump look bad.
The Bot Sentinel analysis also concluded that most of the tweets from coronavirus-based bots were favorable to the president.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
After the election, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy