Thousands of pro-Trump bots are attacking DeSantis, Haley

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WASHINGTON (AP) Over the past 11 months, someone has created thousands of fake, automated Twitter accounts, perhaps hundreds of thousands of them, to offer a stream of praise for Donald Trump.

In addition to posting inflammatory words about the former president, the fake accounts mocked Trump’s critics from both parties and attacked Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador who is challenging her former boss for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

When it came to Ron DeSantis, the bots aggressively suggested that the Florida governor couldn’t beat Trump, but would make a good running mate.

As Republican voters grow their candidates for 2024, whoever created the bot network seeks to put a thumb on the scale, using online manipulation techniques pioneered by the Kremlin to influence the digital platform conversation about candidates while taking advantage of Twitter’s algorithms to maximize their reach.

The vast bot network was discovered by researchers at Cyabra, an Israeli tech firm that shared its findings with The Associated Press. While the identity of those behind the network of fake accounts is unknown, Cyabras analysts have determined that it was likely created within the US

To identify a bot, researchers look for patterns in an account’s profile, its follower list and the content it posts. Human users typically post about a variety of topics, with a mix of original and reposted material, but bots often post repetitive content about the same topics.

That’s true of many of the bots identified by Cyabra.

One account will say, Biden is trying to take our guns; Trump is the best, and another will say, January 6 is a lie and Trump is innocent, said Jules Gross, the Cyabra engineer who first discovered the network. Those voices were not human. For the sake of democracy I want people to know this is happening.

Bots, as they’re commonly called, are fake, automated accounts that became notorious after Russia used them in an effort to interfere in the 2016 election. As big tech companies improve their detection of fake accounts, the network identified by Cyabra shows that they remain a powerful force in shaping online political discussion.

The new pro-Trump network is actually three different networks of Twitter accounts, all created in large batches in April, October and November 2022. In total, researchers believe hundreds of thousands of accounts may be involved.

All accounts feature personal photos of the alleged account owner as well as a name. Some of the accounts post their own content, usually in response to real users, while others repost content from real users, helping to grow it even more.

McConnell… Traitor! wrote one of the accounts, in response to an article in a conservative publication about GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell, one of several Republican critics of Trump targeted by the network.

One way of measuring the impact of bots is to measure the percentage of posts about any given topic generated by accounts that appear to be fake. The percentage for typical online debates is often in the low single digits. Twitter itself says that less than 5% of its active daily users are fake or spam accounts.

When Cyabra researchers analyzed negative posts about specific Trump critics, however, they found higher levels of untruthfulness. Nearly three-quarters of negative posts about Haley, for example, were traced back to fake accounts.

The network also helped popularize a call for DeSantis to join Trump as his vice presidential running mate, an outcome that would serve Trump well and allow him to avoid a potentially bitter fight if DeSantis is entering the race.

Both networks of accounts shared overly positive content about Trump and contributed to an overall false picture of his support online, the researchers found.

Our understanding of what Republican primary sentiment is for 2024 is being manipulated by the proliferation of bots online, Cyabra researchers say.

The triple network was discovered after Gross analyzed Tweets about various national political figures and noticed that many of the accounts posting the content were made on the same day. Most accounts remain active, although they have a relatively modest number of followers.

A message left with a spokeswoman for Trumps campaign was not immediately returned.

Most bots are not designed to persuade people, but to amplify certain content so that more people see it, according to Samuel Woolley, a professor and disinformation researcher at the University of Texas whose most recent book devoted to automated propaganda.

When a human user sees a hashtag or piece of content from a bot and reposts it, they do the networks job for it, and also send a signal to Twitter’s algorithms to boost the spread. of content.

Bots can also succeed in convincing people that a candidate or idea is more or less popular than it actually is, he said. More pro-Trump bots could lead to people overstating his popularity in general, for example.

Bots really affect the flow of information, Woolley said. They are built to create the illusion of popularity. Repetition is the main weapon of propaganda and bots are really good at repetition. They are really good at getting information in front of people’s eyeballs.

Until recently, most bots were easily identified thanks to their clumsy writing or account names that included nonsense words or long strings of random numbers. As social media platforms have become better at detecting these accounts, bots have become more sophisticated.

So-called cyborg accounts are one example: a bot periodically taken over by a user that can post original content and respond to users in human-like ways, making them harder to sniff out.

Bots may soon become sneakier thanks to advances in artificial intelligence. New AI programs can create lifelike profile pictures and posts that look more authentic. Bots that look like real people and deploy deepfake video technology could challenge platforms and users in new ways, according to Katie Harbath, a fellow at the Bipartisan Policy Center and a former director of public policy at Facebook. .

Platforms have gotten better at fighting bots since 2016, Harbath said. But the types that are starting to be seen now, using AI, they can create fake people. Fake videos.

These technological advances likely ensure that bots have a long future in American politics as digital foot soldiers in online campaigns, and as potential problems for both voters and candidates trying to defend themselves against unknown online attacks.

There’s no more noise online, said Tyler Brown, a political consultant and former digital director for the Republican National Committee. How much of it is malicious or even unintentionally unrealistic? It’s easy to imagine that people can manipulate that.

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