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Discord wants to clean up and support its massive bot community
Discord's new verified bots and developers program finally puts bots in the spotlight.
Twitter's new rules require labels for 'high-quality' bots
Not all bots are bad, but all bots need labels: those are Twitter's latest rules for bot accounts that don't want to risk getting booted off the platform. The change was made as part of the company's updated developer policy, which lays out a new policy for accounts that want to use Twitter's developer tools to post automatically. Under the new terms, developers must "clearly indicate," if an account is a bot account, as well as the identity of the person running the account. The goal, according to Twitter, is to make "easier for everyone on Twitter to know what's a bot - and what's not."
Online sneaker drop cancelled thanks to bots
Nike SB -- the company's skateboarding division -- teamed up with Strangelove Skateboards to produce a pair of limited edition Valentine's Day Dunks. The pink and red color scheme was an instant hit with sneakerheads, and Strangelove planned to release the shoes on its website over the weekend. However, bots -- which are programmed to purchase sneakers faster than any human could -- broke into the online store and wreaked havoc. As a result, Strangelove was forced to cancel the online release outright, and advised customers to hunt down a pair of the sneakers at their nearest brick-and-mortar dealer. At this point, it seems like bots have gone from a shady line-cutting tactic to a full-on headache for retailers.
How to buy sneakers for the hypebeast in your life
It's hard enough to find gifts for your loved ones during the holidays, but hypebeasts in particular are a picky bunch. They only want the most hyped products and the rarest sneakers, which can be a complicated world to navigate as a shopper if you're not familiar with it. But we're here to help. Thankfully, there are many ways to find something hypebeasts might like online -- even if you have to spend more money and time than you had hoped for. Here's how you can buy sneakers, apparel and even fanny packs (they call them waist bags) for the hypebeasts in your life.
Congress is asking vape manufacturers if they used social media bots
Congress wants to know if the largest vaping companies used bot-generated social-media messages to market their products. The House Energy and Commerce Committee and the Massachusetts attorney general have asked each of the five largest manufacturers if they've relied on automated, bot-posted campaigns, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Recommended Reading: Your AirPods are going to die
Everyone's AirPods will die. We've got the trick to replacing them. Geoffrey A. Fowler, The Washington Post If you hopped on the AirPod bandwagon early, your earbuds are likely near the end of their life. The Washington Post details what happens when your true wireless audio accessory stops working, including the fact that "battery service" really just means giving you a new pair and tossing your old ones in the recycling bin.
Google tweaks Hangout Chat app to keep conversations organized
Google has made a couple of changes to the design of the Hangout Chat app to make it easier to keep track of your conversations and stay organized. The previously singular list of People, Rooms and Bots has been split into two tabs: People and Rooms, with Bots included in the People tab. Google has also removed the filter at the top of these tabs to make navigation simpler. Search using the magnifying glass at the top of the screen, or start a chat by tapping + in the bottom right corner. These changes are rolling out on iOS and Android now.
Porn bots are now storming Twitter's trending topics
Instagram isn't the only social media app being invaded by porn bots. Now they're on Twitter, too. For the past few days, as I was scrolling through Twitter's trending section, I noticed a number of accounts showing similar behavior as the bots that have taken over Instagram comments. But, whereas on Instagram they're leaving messages like "We gonna ignore the fact that I've GOT A HUGE BOOTY?" or "DON'T LOOK at my STORY, if you don't want to M A S T U R B A T E !" on Twitter the spam also includes pictures of women in bikinis and a bunch of words relevant to topics currently trending on Twitter. And they're even more brazen in their attempts to lure in gullible readers, with messages like "I moan very much during sex, if this does not scare you, call me on whatsapp."
Social media bots are damaging our democracy
Social media has become our town crier. When major news breaks, roughly two-thirds of American adults now find out about it online in real-time. But the aftermath of the week's third mass shooting, environmental catastrophe or political meltdown is often rife with false claims, misinformation, and outright conspiracy theories. Some of this comes simply from the confusion surrounding the unfolding situation but to an increasing degree, the discussions around these events are being deliberately -- and effectively -- influenced by an army of autonomous digital actors.
Instagram’s 'huge booty' problem keeps getting worse
There isn't a day when I don't come across comments from bots on Instagram. They're all over the place. But there's nothing they love more than to spam high-profile pages with millions of followers. Whether it's LeBron James, Kim Kardashian, ESPN or Ariana Grande, their posts are often the target of comments such as "We gonna ignore the fact that I've GOT A HUGE BOOTY?" or "DON'T LOOK at my STORY, if you don't want to M A S T U R B A T E !" Behind these, are fake accounts featuring pictures and videos of naked and half-naked women, whose primary goal is to get people to sign up for shady porn sites. This has become a serious problem for Instagram, one that seems to be getting worse by the day and that the company needs to get a handle on, before it gets more out of control.
Recommended Reading: The music streaming payday won't go to artists
The record industry expects a windfall. Where will the money go? Marc Hogan, Pitchfork It's no secret the music industry is booming on the back of streaming services. However, it seems like not much will change in terms of where all the money goes. Pitchfork explains that much of the revenue will stay in the "upper echelon" of the industry rather than going to most of the people actually making music. "And yet, just as it's been throughout the history of recorded music, most of the money will not go to artists," Marc Hogan writes.
This AI-powered subreddit has been simulating the real thing for years
Can the human discourse on social media in 2019 be properly captured by a group of well-programmed bots? Of course it can. r/subredditsimulator is a subreddit -- three years in the making -- that consists solely of neural network bots. It works by generating random submissions and comments based on posts from other popular subreddits. The bots are each assigned to a specific subreddit, and the selection ranges from Reddit's darkest (r/theredpill) to fluffiest corners (r/cats, r/adviceanimals).
Many of the Brexit Party's Twitter followers appear to be bots
It's not shocking to see Twitter bots latch on to a political campaign, but it's not often they do so soon after a campaign starts -- let alone on a large scale. That appears to be the case with the UK's Brexit Party, however. The no-deal EU withdrawal party is only a few months old, but researchers talking to BuzzFeed News found that many of its Twitter accounts are networks of bots and other inauthentic users. The exact amount isn't clear, but F-Secure's Andy Patel noted that over 8,800 users -- roughly 7 percent of the party's Twitter base -- were both recently recreated and disproportionately responsible for retweeting party material.
Twitter bots pushed 'Russiagate hoax' following the Mueller report
As much as Twitter has done to keep bots from manipulating users, it still has work to do. NBC News and disinformation campaign researcher Clint Watts have learned that a network of over 5,000 Trump-supporting Twitter bots echoed an attack on the alleged "Russiagate hoax" following the release of the Mueller report in mid-April. They'd been created between November and December of 2018, but were only taken down on April 21st for violating Twitter rules forbidding "platform manipulation."
Bots have invaded Instagram comments
The last thing I expected to find on Instagram was someone telling me not to look at their Story if I didn't want to masturbate. But that comment, which I can only assume was intended reverse psychology, wasn't just directed at me. It was left on a post from Sky Sports and, thanks to the thousands of likes garnered by the comment, it was the first thing the account's 2.7 million followers would see when they looked at the comments on that picture. There are similar comments all over Instagram, particularly on high-profile pages with millions of followers. And they have one thing in common: They're spam profiles with pictures and videos of naked and half-naked women, which were created to get you to look at their accounts and then have you sign up for shady pornographic sites.
Russia worked hard to recruit social media users to campaign for Trump
We already knew that the Internet Research Agency (IRA), which is essentially a farm of bots and trolls, exposed 126 million Americans on Facebook to Russian-backed propaganda during the 2016 US presidential election. But today's release of the redacted Mueller report has shed light on new details, including the great lengths the IRA went to in using social media to provoke social discord in the US. The report from Special Counsel Robert Mueller, titled "The Investigation Into Russian Interference In The 2016 Presidential Election," highlights how the IRA created thousands of accounts on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and Tumblr to create posts in "support for the Trump Campaign and opposition to candidate [Hillary] Clinton."
Twitter limits daily follows to combat spammers
In an apparent attempt to combat spam and bot accounts that populate its platform, Twitter announced today that it is changing its rules to allow users to follow up to 400 accounts per day. The change marks a considerable drop from the previous cap, which allowed up to 1,000 follows in a single day, though still allows for more following than the average human user is likely to do in a 24 hour period.
Twitter is removing 'locked' accounts, again
As Twitter has tried to get a handle on fake accounts floating around its service for various reasons, there have been a series of purges. Last July many high-profile accounts saw their follower numbers dip as it removed accounts that had already been locked for suspicious activity, but since then some of the accounts had apparently been unlocked. The company confirmed to Reuters that it "discovered a bug where some of these accounts were briefly added back, which led to misleading follower counts."
Twitter suspends bots spreading pro-Saudi tweets about missing journalist
Twitter has suspended hundreds of accounts suspected to be bots, which had been tweeting pro-Saudi sentiments regarding the disappearance of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. According to NBC News, it presented the company with a spreadsheet of hundreds of accounts compiled by IT professional Josh Russell. Those accounts were tweeting and re-tweeting the same pro-Saudi government posts and in the same order, like a botnet would.
Google-backed startup's chat bots turn ads into conversations
AdLingo, a marketing platform fresh out of Google's Area 120 incubator program, is making advertisements "conversational" with the help of AI. AdLingo doesn't build its own chatbots, but instead connects third-party chatbot tools with a company's marketing department.
