Although Twitter is a fairly secure platform, unfortunately like any other social network, it is not exempt from bots. Understanding this, below we will talk about how you can detect a bot within Twitter . At the same time, we will tell you about other fundamental aspects that you may not know about bots.
Index( )
- What is a Bot?
- What characteristics allow you to identify a bot on this social network?
- Bots post at all times
- Profile photo repeats across multiple accounts
- How to spot a ‘good’ bot on Twitter?
What is a Bot?
Bots are small programs whose objective is to carry out operations automatically . Most of the time, these actions are summarized in repetitive issues, which in the case of social networks translates into publications or following as many people as possible, among many others.
Certainly the whole bot thing is not very well seen, at least not bots that serve as followers. On the other hand, they could be very annoying , but actions as basic as creating a private list on Twitter can help control them, there is also always the possibility of reporting an account .
What characteristics allow you to identify a bot on this social network?
Before doing anything, it would be best to protect your Twitter account, applying actions such as limiting the people who can comment on you . The truth is, it is one of the best ways to avoid annoying bots. Even so, it is worth knowing some very common characteristics that we can find in most Twitter bots.
Bots post at all times
Most bots make posts on a recurring basis, in fact, they get to the point that they are excessive. Therefore, if you see a lot of publications by an account and even more so if these publications do not make much sense , it is very possible that you are facing a bot.
In the same way, the quality of content published by the bots is not good, in fact, most of them are in the English language and they usually publish very generic phrases. Of course, the above is not an absolute thing, there are also bots that work in other languages
Similarly, the content published by bots does not usually have an established address or is very representative of everyday circumstances. For this reason, you will never or very rarely see ‘opinions’ of a recent event, since bots cannot access global trends on Twitter or even respond ‘intelligently’.
Profile photo repeats across multiple accounts
A very defining aspect of most bots is that they use ‘generic’ profile photos , which in other words means that you will very likely see the same photo in many bots. Therefore, if you come across several accounts that have the same photo and publish content of dubious origin, it is possible that they are bots.
It is clearly not an absolute point, as many bots are modifiable, so they could change the profile photo. However , not all bot services that are purchased fraudulently offer these qualities.
In fact, we dare to say that the vast majority of bots are very easy to identify precisely by their profile photo. For this reason, added to the information we pointed out before, a very common profile photo and other ‘suspicious’ aspects make it easy to conclude when a Twitter account is a bot and when it is not.
How to spot a ‘good’ bot on Twitter?
Not all bots are negative, there are a few that are designed precisely to transmit information more quickly or even provide automated solutions to certain users.
For example, there are the so-called ‘public service bots’ , which mostly provide relevant information for Twitter users. Clear examples are those bots related to the academy or directly to the news and other similar content.
Now how can we identify the ‘good’ bots? Certainly most of the time they are very easy to identify, since Twitter tends to categorize them. To be more specific, if you come across the word ‘(bot)’ right after the account name, you are surely looking at a good bot. In fact, most of the time the name of the author of said bot will also be displayed.
