Twitter has been taking actions to keep political operatives
from misusing its platform and in this case the biggest cause of concern for
Twitter is bots.
During the 2016 US Elections, it was observed that there’s
an inter-connected Twitter bot network with 500,000 fake accounts that took
part in political discussions. In 2019, Wired reported that bot profiles were
dominant in political news streams and had involvement in almost 60% of tweet
activities. Moreover, earlier this year a network of bots was discovered to
spreading misinformation related to conspiracy theories about the Australian
bushfire crisis.
Although Twitter made headlines for removing political ads
on the platform, bots still remain an issue to be resolved by the platform.
Therefore, this new update could be relevant in this regard.
Twitter will be updating its rules regarding its Developer
API involving latest regulations around academic research and comparing anonymous
profiles with actual identities.
According to Twitter:
"
Not all bots are bad. In fact, high-quality bots can enhance everyone’s
experience on Twitter. Our new policy asks that developers clearly indicate (in
their account bio or profile) if they are operating a bot account, what the
account is, and who the person behind it is, so it’s easier for everyone on
Twitter to know what’s a bot - and what’s not."
While it is expected that
scammers may not pay any heed to this, it gives Twitter the push to take some
steps to remove bot scammers and reduce their impact.
Recently Twitter announced that
it is considering to label bot accounts to give users a clear idea about what
or who is interacting with them.
Bots have to be built on a system
that needs to be integrated with Twitter’s developer API so the pressure is on
bot developers to adhere to rules or put themselves at risk of losing access.
If Twitter could enforce penalties it could add more transparency for bots as
well as pushing out people who want to misuse its platform.
This is an area that needed
Twitter’s action and while the step may not be huge it still contributes to
lessen the impact of bots.
We’ll have to wait and see if
Twitter uses the new update to take action against deceiving bot profiles on
the platform.
