Security News > 2020 > February > Cyborgs, Trolls and Bots: A Guide to Online Misinformation
2020-02-08 16:50
Cyborgs, trolls and bots can fill the internet with lies and half-truths.
WAR OF THE BOTS AND CYBORGS. The disposable foot soldiers in this digital conflict are bots.
The Pew Research Center concluded in a 2018 study that accounts suspected of being bots are responsible for as many as two-thirds of all tweets that link to popular websites.
"You can get a lot from a bot, but maybe it's not the best quality," said Emilio Ferrara, a data science researcher at the University of Southern California who co-wrote the study on Twitter bots.
SPOT THE BOTS. Bots can be hard to spot, even for the best researchers.