Hackaday: Bots That Snag The Hottest Fashion While Breaking Social Trust In Commerce. “At DEF CON 27 [FinalPhoenix] took the stage to share her adventures in writing bots and uncovering a world that buys and sells purchasing automation, forming groups much like cryptocurrency mining pools to generate leads on when the latest fashion is about to drop. This is no small market either. If your bots are leet enough, you can make a ton of cash. Let’s take a look at what it takes to write a bot, and at the bots-for-sale economy that has grown up around these concepts.”
bots
Cops and corgis: New Russian social media bot puts riot police where you least expect them (Meduza)
Meduza: Cops and corgis: New Russian social media bot puts riot police where you least expect them. “FreeOmon is a bot account based in the social network Telegram. Its sole function is to add Russian riot police to preexisting images. Any user who sends the bot an image file immediately receives a new-and-improved, highly secured version in return. “
Beware: Fake Twitter accounts exploit emergencies to spread misinformation (University of California, Irvine)
University of California, Irvine: Beware: Fake Twitter accounts exploit emergencies to spread misinformation. “When earthquakes, firestorms or hurricanes strike, people often turn to Twitter for instant updates from government agencies, news outlets and neighbors. But user beware: networks of automated fake Twitter accounts, or ‘bots,’ exploit exactly these emergency situations to spread propaganda or misinformation, says University of California, Irvine sociology graduate student Richard Gardner.”
The Next Web: How to find and remove fake accounts on Twitter
The Next Web: How to find and remove fake accounts on Twitter. “You could manually go through your followers list, find fake profiles, and unfollow them one by one, but who’s got time for that? In this article you’ll discover a couple of tools to help you find and remove fake followers – and you won’t have to spend ages doing it!”
NITV: New Twitter bot reminds users to capitalise Indigenous
NITV: New Twitter bot reminds users to capitalise Indigenous. “Frustrated with seeing many newsrooms failing to capitalise ‘Indigenous’, a Northern Territory software developer launches a new bot to assist journalists to lift their game.”
Canada’s National Observer: Twitter bots boosted the trending #TrudeauMustGo hashtag
Canada’s National Observer: Twitter bots boosted the trending #TrudeauMustGo hashtag. “The hashtag #TrudeauMustGo soared to the top of Twitter’s trending list in Canada on Tuesday, perhaps giving some observers the impression that Canadians were taking to social media en masse to express their discontent with the prime minister. But a closer look revealed that much of the activity surrounding the hashtag was actually driven by accounts tweeting at non-human rates, including about two dozen accounts created in the past 48 hours.”
Law.com: With New Bot Law, California Puts Social Media Giants on Notice
Law.com: With New Bot Law, California Puts Social Media Giants on Notice. “California’s new bot law went into effect on July 1, which means it’s now officially illegal to use undeclared bots to incentivize a sale or influence an election. The parameters of the legislation are fairly narrow, targeting bots deployed ‘with the intent to mislead the other person about its artificial identity for the purpose of knowingly deceiving.'”
