#BotSpot: Twelve Ways to Spot a Bot

The less personal information an account gives, the more likely it is to be a Bot. 

The only unique feature is a link to a US-based political action committee:

@Blackmantrump gives no personal information at all. There is thus no indication of what person lies behind the account.

Bots boost the signal from other users by Retweeting, liking or quoting them. The most effective way to establish this pattern is to Machine-Scan a large number of posts. 

195 of @Sunneversets100’s last 200 Tweets were retweets, many of them from RT and Sputnik, while @Blackmantrump was silent from November 14 to December 13, 2016; when it resumed posting, it was at a far lower rate.

Botnets can quickly be identified when they are used to amplify a single post. 

An account called @Kirstenkellog_ posted a Tweet attacking Propublica. It had only posted 12 times; 11 of them had already been deleted. 

Another account was just as idle, having posted six Tweets and followed five other accounts. A botnet is a group of accounts which Retweet the same post once each.

If accounts all post the same content at the same time, they are probably programmed to do so. They say identical series of posts which are classic signs of automation.

Some users have silhouettes on their accounts for entirely innocuous reasons but if the list of accounts which RT or like a post looks like the photo attached to this idea, it's a certain sign of bot activity.

A good test of an account’s veracity is therefore to reverse search its AVATAR picture. A number of accounts in the same network actually used the image, confirming that they were fakes: in the case of “Shelly Wilson”, a number of accounts in the same network actually used the image.

Many Bots have handles which are simply Alphanumeric Scrambles. Others have typically male names but female images.

All these indicate that the account is a fake, impersonating someone. 

However, identifying the type of fake, and whether it is a Bot, will depend on its behavior.

Botnets are marked by extreme diversity of language use.

Retweets posted by Erik Young, the "woman who loves Jesus" show content in Arabic, English, Spanish, and Swahili. In real life, anyone who has mastered all those languages probably has better things to do than advertising Youtube videos.

Some Botnets appear to exist primarily for that purpose, only occasionally Venturing into politics.

When they do, their focus on advertising often betrays them. Accounts which largely show retweets like this are probably members of commercial Botnets.

URL Shorteners are primarily used to track traffic on a particular link, but the frequency with which they are used can be an indicator of automation. 

For example, one Recently-Exposed fake account called “Angee Dixson” shared a large number of Far-Right political posts. A Timeline which is full of URL Shorteners is therefore likely to be a Bot.

Other Url Shorteners can also indicate automation, if they occur repeatedly throughout the timeline.

Some Bots are programmed to both Retweet and like the same Tweet. In such cases, the number of Retweets and likes will be almost identical. E

Exactly the same accounts retweeted and liked the Tweet, in the same order, and at the same time.