Twitter Bots Account For About 1/4 Of Climate Lies On Any Given Day; Expect Nothing From Jack Dorsey

[hatrack]

EDIT

The bots were also more prevalent in discussions on climate research and news. Other areas of focus for the bots were tweets that included the term “Exxon” and research that cast doubt on climate science. One such tweet highlighted a Nobel laureate in physics who falsely claimed “global warming is pseudoscience.” “These findings indicate that bots are not just prevalent, but disproportionately so in topics that were supportive of Trump’s announcement or skeptical of climate science and action,” the paper said.

The proportion of bot tweets was smaller on the days immediately surrounding Trump’s decision on the Paris Agreement, the researchers found. That’s because, they believe, people who don’t often tweet about climate change did so at that time and the bots were unable to quickly respond to the flood of climate chatter. The researchers weren’t able to determine who deployed the bots. But they suspect the seemingly fake accounts could have been created by “fossil-fuel companies, petro-states or their surrogates,” all of which have a vested interest in preventing or delaying action on climate change.

Other researchers who study climate conversations on Twitter have found an even greater prevalence of bot-like accounts. A paper published last year in the Proceedings of the International Conference SBP-BRiMS 2020 estimated that 35% of the accounts that tweeted about climate during the 2018 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Poland were bots. But that paper, from researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, found there were an equal number of bots that both supported and cast doubt on climate science.

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The reason Twitter and other platforms haven’t taken that step, Cook said, is because there are financial incentives to ignore the problem. “Generally speaking, misinformation is good business,” he said. “Misinformation is more likely to be clicked and liked because it tends to be more sticky,” Cook explained. “And the business model of social media platforms are likes and clicks and shares: The more an item gets interaction, the more money a platform makes.”

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https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/twitter-bots-are-a-major-source-of-climate-disinformation/

[abqtommy]

1. It's obvious that all social media provides platforms for manipulators. I get along fine without

social media and if we count DU as part of that then I make an exception for DU. I've made my choice just as
we all do.

[nam78_two]

3. Same here.nt

[secondwind]

2. We sure are infested with capitalism. How sad.

Money is more important than health and quality of life....