Twitter Updates the Policy Developer to Identify Bots #Article

Twitter has taken steps to stop political activists abussing its platform and in this case the main cause of Twitter's concern is bots.

During the 2016 US Elections, an advanced Twitter bot network of 500,000 fake accounts was found to have participated in political discussions. In 2019, Wired reported that bot profiles were dominant in political news outlets and involved almost 60 per cent of tweet activities. Furthermore, earlier this year a network of bots was discovered to spread misinformation linked to the conspiracy theories about the Australian bushfire crisis.

While Twitter made headlines to ban political ads on the web, bots still remain a challenge to solve with technology. Hence, the latest update can be relevant in this regard.

Twitter must update its App API rules with the latest regulations for academic study, and align anonymous accounts with real identities.

"Not all bots are bad. Furthermore, high-quality bots can enhance the experience of people on Twitter. Our new policy allows developers to state clearly (in their bio or profile page) that they are running a bot page, what the account is, and who the person behind it is, so it's easier for everyone on Twitter to know what a bot is and what isn't."

Bots need to be built on a platform that is compliant with Twitter's developer API and bot developers are under pressure to obey guidelines or lose access to risk. If Twitter implements restrictions, it could give bots more transparency and push out people trying to manipulate their platform.

This is an area needing Twitter intervention and although the change might not be that, it still helps to mitigate the impact of the bots.

We'll have to wait and see if Twitter's using the new update to take action against malicious bot accounts on the site.