The Little Guide to Spotting Bots

Social Media Bots can be designed for different purposes (2,11,19): 

• Click/Like Farming: Bots boost an account’s popularity by generating fake likes or reposts.
• Hashtag Highjacking: Bots use popular hashtags to spread spam or malicious content.
• Repost Storm: A lead bot shares content, triggering a coordinated reposting attack by a bot network.
• Trend Jacking: Bots exploit trending topics to spread their message or target an audience.
• Astroturfing: Bots can throw their weight behind different issues to artificially inflate the perception of support.

There are detection tools online that can help you identify X bot accounts (e.g. Bot-o-Meter, Twitter Audit, Bot Sentinel) (18).

If you think you have found a bot, report it and block it (20). By reporting bot accounts and removing them from your followers list, you can limit the spread of misinformation, but also potentially boost your account as engagement on your posts will now be more genuine (16). 

Have you spotted bots in the wild? How did you know they were bot accounts? Let us know!