Internet bots creating issues for social media during Alberta election

CALGARY (660 NEWS) — A problem more and more elections seem to be running into, bots influencing political agendas on social media such as Facebook and Twitter,

Gil McGowan’s team at the Alberta Federation of Labour noticed a large number of anonymous Facebook users influencing political conversations.

So, they commissioned a report by Mentionmapp Analytics that came back showing that about one in three users was in fact not a user at all, but bot created to amplify certain messages.

CEO John Gray of the company explained why those accounts appear to be suspect.

“The average human being doesn’t sit and tweet 72 plus times per day, seven days a week. And in some cases this wasn’t just a one week period, this was looked at over a five-week period,” Gray said.
“And disconcerning as well was the number of profiles that were, let’s say, amplifying various messages.”

Specific hashtags like #ABPoli and #ABLeg have been, and are popular targets of bots for flooding the web.

Top Stories

Top Stories

Most Watched Today