PR and marketing dedicate considerable time and effort to growing Twitter followers for their brands, but many of those followers are likely fake bot accounts.
Fake Twitter accounts are used to inflate follower numbers, send spam and boost interest in trending topics. The bots are run remotely by someone who automates the messages they send and their other activities. Celebrities and other influencers sometimes pad follower figures with large numbers of fake profiles, making influencer marketing challenging. Bogus profiles are also an issue on other networks. A group of Italian security researchers estimates as many as 8% of Instagram accounts are fake “spam-bots.” Others believe the percentage is a great deal higher.
Research Uncovers Twitter Bot Network
New research uncovered a network of 350,000 fake Twitter accounts and suggests even more lurk on the network. Computer programmers at the University College London accidentally discovered a network of bot accounts while researching Twitter. The fact that the accounts are linked together in a network suggests that a single person or group controls them. Accounts shared several characteristics:
- tweets from places where nobody lives,
- messages posted only from Windows phones, and
- messages almost exclusively of quotes from Star Wars novels.
Other bot networks likely abound on Twitter. “It is difficult to assess exactly how many Twitter users are bots,” said graduate student Juan Echeverria, a UCL computer scientist, who found the bots.
Scary Potential Threats
“Considering all the efforts already there in detecting bots, it is amazing that we can still find so many bots, much more than previous research,” Dr. Shi Zhou told the BBC. “Their potential threats are real and scary due to the sheer size of the botnet,” he said.
They are asking people to report bots they find to thatisabot.com or to report bots to them on Twitter by tweeting to @thatisabot.
Discovery of the bot network was surprising since Twitter has worked hard to weed out bot accounts. It asks users to report fake accounts as well as impersonations at its help center.
The prevalence of bots has prompted the rise of online apps that audit accounts to determine their number of fake followers. Almost everyone has at least some bot followers. Some have more than others. Twitter Audit has regularly estimated that more than a quarter of Trump’s Twitter followers are fake.
Top Warnings Signs that Accounts are Bots
These are some top warning signs that accounts are fake, from digital marketing expert Chris Makara.
No profile photo – just the empty “egg head” image, although it could also be a sign of laziness.
Stock images or a profile image shared by other fake accounts. You can search Google to find if the image has been used by others. Right click on the profile image and copy the link location, then search for the image in Google Images.
No bio. A bio is essential for engaging on Twitter. Skipping over this is typically a sign of not only laziness, but a tell-tale sign the account is almost certainly fake.
Excessive duplicate tweets. A profile with the same or very similar tweets indicates a probable fake account. Tweets are all @replies with the same text, indicates a bot account.
Incoherent tweets. Fake accounts usually post self-serving tweets linking directly to their site. However, many simply post gibberish or that makes no sense.
No tweets in years. Check the time stamp of the most recent tweets.
Low or no follower counts. Few humans follow bots
Unrealistic numbers of tweets. Most humans don’t churn out tens of thousands of tweets in short order.
Bottom Line: Fake bot accounts on Twitter can cause problems for social media measurement and influencer marketing. However, Twitter users can usually spot bot accounts if they know the red flags to seek. In addition, online apps can estimate the number of fake Twitter followers.
William J. Comcowich founded and served as CEO of CyberAlert LLC, the predecessor of Glean.info. He is currently serving as Interim CEO and member of the Board of Directors. Glean.info provides customized media monitoring, media measurement and analytics solutions across all types of traditional and social media.
