Orchestrated Bot Campaign Is Behind “Reopen” Push

Carnegie Mellon University reports:

Carnegie Mellon University researchers have discovered that much of the discussion around the pandemic and stay-at-home orders is being fueled by misinformation campaigns that use convincing bots.

To analyze bot activity around the pandemic, CMU researchers since January have collected more than 200 million tweets discussing coronavirus or COVID-19. Of the top 50 influential retweeters, 82% are bots, they found. Of the top 1,000 retweeters, 62% are bots.

The monitoring of tweets is ongoing and collections from Facebook, Reddit and YouTube have been added to the research. Tweeting more frequently than is humanly possible or appearing to be in one country and then another a few hours later is indicative of a bot.

Read the full article. (Tipped by JMG reader Paul)

82% of the top 50 most influential twitter accounts pushing to “reopen America” are fake bots. Of the top 1,000 retweeters, 62% are fake Twitter bots. These are orchestrated Twitter bot campaigns to sow division. Don’t be duped by people smarter than you. https://t.co/yXS8zWoert

— D.J. Grothe (@DJGrothe) May 21, 2020