bots | Common News Update

Feb222020 by adminNo Comments

Study finds quarter of climate change tweets from bots

Technology

A study by researchers at Brown University has found a quarter of posts about climate change on Twitter were written by bots.Bots are computer programs that can masquerade as humans to post or send messages on social media.Researchers discovered tweets posted by bots created the impression there was a high level of climate change denial.The paper detailing the finds has not yet been published and was first reported by The Guardian newspaper.The research team analysed 6.5 million tweets from the period surrounding President Donald Trump's June 2017 announcement that he was removing the United States from the Paris climate accord.The finding showed 25% of tweets on climate change were likely posted by bots. Most of those tweets centred on denials of global ...

Mar222019 by adminNo Comments

Why bots probably aren't gaming the 'Cancel Brexit' petition

Technology

Questions have been asked about whether a government petition calling for Brexit to be cancelled has been swamped by bots. Bots are automated programmes which can carry out a command thousands of times.The BBC spoke to three cyber-security experts about how likely it is that a number of the 3m signatures gathered so far are not genuine.They all agreed that the petition's email validation process would be a deterrent.Each signatory has to supply a unique email address to which a verification link is sent before their signature can be accepted. UK-based signatories must also share a valid postcode.While email addresses are easy enough to set up, doing that in real time at high volume is less straightforward.Additionally, while it is possible to buy lists of...

Nov32018 by adminNo Comments

US mid-terms: Twitter deletes anti-voting bots

Technology

Twitter has deleted an estimated 10,000 automated accounts that were posting messages discouraging people from taking part in next week's US mid-term elections.Most of the accounts were posing as Democrats, the social media company said.They were taken down in late September and early October.Twitter was alerted to the accounts by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC).The DCCC was formed in response to the party's failure to respond to widespread false and negative information on social media about Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election, Reuters reported.Twitter believes that the network of now-deleted accounts was run from the US, CNN reported.The DCCC is reported to be working with contractors to identify mis...

Aug92018 by adminNo Comments

John Oliver, not bots, a source of FCC’s negative net neutrality repeal comments

Technology

The Federal Communications Commission acknowledged Wednesday that bots were not responsible for the agency's website slowdown after it sought public comment last year on its controversial plan to repeal net neutrality. After people were temporarily unable to contest the proposal, the FCC at the time put out a statement blaming the issue on an "attack" by bots coordinated by "external actors." "Beginning on Sunday night at midnight, our analysis reveals that the FCC was subject to multiple distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDos)," said Chief Information Officer David Bray in the statement. "These actors were not attempting to file comments themselves; rather they made it difficult for legitimate commenters to access and file with the FCC." However, the slowdown was likely due to ...

May112018 by adminNo Comments

Google to warn when humans chat with convincing bots

Technology

Google says it will take steps to ensure that humans are not fooled when they get called by software bots that can convincingly mimic the human voice. Anyone called by the bot will be told they are conversing with a machine, Google told tech news site the Verge.The vocal skills of the Duplex bot were demonstrated at Google's I/O developer conference this week when it was shown booking a hair appointment.The demo left one technology expert "horrified" by what she had seen.Social impactIn its statement, Google said it valued the discussion the demonstration had fostered and said "transparency" around the use of the technology was important."We are designing this feature with disclosure built-in, and we'll make sure the system is ap...