Hey there, robots! I mean reporters. We’re all humans here, right? I’ve been reading up on bots pumping their nonexistent opinions into the web sphere, and it’s getting pretty crazy.
Twitter is a breeding ground, but luckily there’s Botometer.
Bots are by no means inherently bad, but it might be super handy to know if a troll is really a robot, for instance, or if a huge number of tweeters are all controlled by one puppeteer.
And here’s my “That said”:
That said, Botometer is very open about the fact that it is still an experiment. If you run your own account, for instance, it probably won’t come up a 0. I was relieved to find I was only half as botty as the infamous Horse_ebooks.
I think Botometer is a great entry in the ballooning field of misinformation-detecting technology. If you’re interested in similar tools that are still under development, I’d check out the other Knight prototype winners.