Twitter Bot Networks Targeted Kentucky Election

USA Today reports:

As the final votes trickled in during last week’s Kentucky gubernatorial election, a network of automated Twitter accounts suddenly sprang into action. They spread misinformation about the election being rigged, according to the CEO of a company that tracks political misinformation on social media.

Gideon Blocq, the founder and CEO of VineSight, told The Courier Journal his company witnessed thousands of accounts with “bot-like” automated behavior spreading misinformation about the race, including a screenshot of a tweet by one account claiming to have destroyed ballots with votes for incumbent Republican Gov. Matt Bevin.

“Immediately at the end of the counting of the votes, these stories started popping up in parallel, all about the election being rigged,” Block said. One of the tweets spreading the furthest came from user @Overlordkraken1, which tweeted at 8:39 p.m. he had “just shredded a box of Republican mail in ballots,” adding “Bye bye Bevin.” The tweet listed the user’s location as Louisville, though it misspelled the word.