The Royal Spanish Botnet Army
The botnet was run by professionals. The researchers noticed this atonce. One real account, supported by two assistants, controlled more
than a hundred bogus Twitter profiles. In less than two months the
propaganda network spewed upwards of 41,000 tweets. Their goal? Support a
political party, a newspaper, and a country's royal house.
is awash in government propaganda. The social media platform has become
the most important political forum on the planet. But while Twitter
gives everyone a voice, it also gives anyone with the right tools (and a
desire to cheat) the ability to automate an army of bots, and thus a
megaphone to drown out honest users.
A group of researchers in
Spain is fed up. They taught themselves Python and learned how to use
Twitter's API so they could fight back against this trend.
"This conduct is morally unacceptable," they wrote on their blog. "It's scamming the people and we must not permit it."
Data visualization in Gephi of fake accounts. Notice how all the fake accounts follow each other. Image: Bots de Twitter
