Changes in social networks are constant, and you have probably wondered what an automated account on Twitter means . For a few months now, Twitter has been adding this information to the bio of certain profiles that have been configured to work automatically. In short, we are dealing with what is popularly known as a bot that has the Twitter seal of approval.
For an account to appear labeled as an automated account, its developer must have used the Twitter API, that is, Twitter’s own interface in which developers can design applications for this social network . These bots , being developed under the umbrella of the social network itself, must comply with Twitter’s rules of use.
The bots approved by Twitter are expected to offer a public service to users , and in recent months all kinds of automated accounts have been seen, from those that offer vaccination rates against COVID-19 to those that offer weather information. or share works of art from a museum. In Spain, one of the most recognizable is the @GobiernoAlerta account, which reveals who members of the Spanish public administrations follow or unfollow.
This new informative function of Twitter on automated accounts responds to an attempt to reinforce transparency . In recent years, apparently human accounts that actually hid bots intended to create disinformation campaigns have proliferated without apparent limit, which has impacted the prestige of this social network, considered to be a much more hostile environment than others such as Instagram or tiktok.
HOW TO KNOW IF A TWITTER ACCOUNT IS ACTUALLY A BOT
The proliferation of automated accounts of all kinds has made us wonder how to tell if a Twitter account is actually a bot . The most traditional method is our own intuition, since these accounts are characterized by publishing with a high frequency, being anonymous and dedicating themselves exclusively to acting as a speaker of a specific topic.
In the case of automated accounts approved by the platform, their recognition method is quite simple, since they include a robot emoji under their username and the developer’s Twitter account next to it, as seen in the @GobiernoAlerta profile .
Keep in mind that bots that have not been developed within the Twitter API will not carry this tag . Many developers prefer to remain anonymous – or not use this API – and not specify that a certain account works automatically, even if its behavior makes us suspect that it actually does.
To detect this type of bots that have been created externally to Twitter, there are other pages that allow us to determine whether we are dealing with an automated account or not. One of the most used is Botometer , an external API that offers us an estimate of whether the behavior of an account is typical of a bot or not. The closer your estimate is to 5, the more likely it is that we are facing a profile of this type.
Botometer will request access to our profile before analyzing whether or not an account is automated. Being developed by the University of Indiana in the US, it seems to be a fairly reliable option compared to other APIs that can offer a similar service.
Another option to identify bots is to use the Bot Sentinel website , which analyzes in real time the main trending topics and the behavior of users who are tweeting about those specific topics. By clicking on ‘Analyze Account’, we will be able to enter the user name that we want so that it offers us some conclusions about its behavior, without the need to grant access to our personal account.
