How Bots Operate on Social Media

If you have an interest in art, Twitter has the bot for you:  the MoMA bot. This bot tweets an image from the Museum of Modern Art’s collection four times daily. Bots like the MoMA bot exist to educate and amuse people, but not all bots are used for positive purposes. 

So what is a bot? Bots are programs that are designed to engage on social media platforms, often leveraging the platform’s API infrastructure, without requiring human intervention.  Depending on the platform, engaging can mean posting, sharing, or liking content. They are not able to have prolonged conversations with other users. 

While bots can be used in positive ways, understanding how bots can be used for malicious intent and identifying how they behave online can limit their reach. Bots can amplify a specific user or perspective, spread spam or mis- and disinformation, and shut down free speech by pushing down other users’ content. This can result in the creation of an inauthentic vacuum, limiting other users’ ability to counter false narratives. 

Identifying bots is an art and a science. Some bots state that they are bots in their description or username, post at the same times each day, and never engage with other users. Others have human profile pictures, are programmed to tag other users in their posts to look more ‘authentic,’ and even have people login manually to make them appear like they are actively run by a person. 

How do you start identifying bots? By paying attention to pattern of life. Check how often the account posts, if the times they post are consistent with the time zone they claim to live in, patterns in the content or language they post, and the timing of the posts. You can also perform a reverse image search on their profile picture to see if it is unique and see if the accounts respond to direct messages or responses to their public posts.  These approaches will not enable you to identify every bot, but it is a good way to start to identify who is a human and who is not. 

As the MoMA bot illustrates, bots can be used for a variety of purposes. Whether it be to provide levity, to educate, or to influence the broader populace, bot activity on social media is here to stay.  It is important now more than ever to understand what tactics various bots leverage for users to combat malicious activity.