Joseph Molina
CST 373 - Ethics in Comm & Tech
Professor Scott
20 April 2017
Did Twitter Bots Influence the Political Election?
More than ever before, a big part of the presidential election has played itself out on social media. Without a doubt presidential candidates, utilize their social media accounts to promote themselves and their campaigns. Social media is a powerful tool when used correctly that can both benefit the candidate or harm the candidate’s reputation and is a strong factor within the final outcome of the presidential election. Candidates tend to tweet campaign promises, where they will be speaking, or to simply connect with their supporters. Given that 44% of U.S. adults learn about the presidential election from social media which outpaces both local and national print newspapers, a positive social media presence contributes to reaching more voters. In addition to this, due to the immense amount of information and opinions we form comes from social media it is possible to manipulate the network in order to control the public's opinion. This leads to the phenomenon known as bots. A bot is an automated application used to perform simple and repetitive tasks that would otherwise be too time-consuming for a typical human to perform according to technopedia (1). One may have encountered a bot through Apple’s Siri or Amazon’s Alexa or Microsoft's Zo chatbot, bots are increasingly being used. Specifically for Twitter, a bot can be used to “like”, retweet, direct message and follow any user online. Throughout the 2016 presidential campaign, automated networks of social-media bots spread erroneous information to potential voters—often to the benefit of Trump and therefore played a strong factor in the elections outcome and for that very reason, leads to the question, should bots be allowed on Twitter and other social media sites?
As with any issue, there exist people or individuals that are affected by it. The first and most obvious is Twitter the corporation with the most at stake being their reputation. Twitter is known for deliver breaking news, 140 character count interactive messages and for trending topics.Yet that stable reputation is being converting into a fake news and spam bot filled website. Over time, users will begin to associate Twitter with bots and spam which in result will bring the company a loss of revenue and loss of audience.
If Twitter is affected by bots the general users of Twitter are surely affected by them as well. One of the biggest reasons users decide to use Twitter is for the ability to tweet and discover users who share similar interest with you, see trending topics around the world engage in conversation. Bots ruin all three of those features which in return will ruin the entire experience for users leading them to utilize another form of social media.
One overlooked stakeholder is the community of developers. A developer in this context is both one with good intentions and one with harmful intentions. Both of them are developing some type of software that has an effect on themselves and on Twitter and their users.
Lastly, since we are viewing this from the presidential perspective, the presidential candidates were deeply affected by bots during the presidential campaign. Bots could either support and damage the reputation of a presidential candidate which in return will affect the overall outcome of the election.
A very important key to democracy is the engagement from the public especially when that engagement is a discussion among each other free from outside influence and open,honest opinions. More and more people are deciding to speak your voice online, yet what happens when an immense number of participants are actually biased bots? As it turns out, many of the political content we see online every day is actually not human produced content but rather computer generated content. According to “How Twitter bots played a role in electing Donald Trump”, one in every give election-related tweets from September 16 to October 21 was generated by bots. To put this into perspective it was found that more than 400,000 bots were retweeting and tweeting during the election with Donald having one-third of his followers being bots and Hillary having a quarter of her followers be bots according to Oxford University professor,Sam Woolley. These bots are responsible for more than 20% of the total election tweets. This means that most of the political tweets one saw on his or her timeline were not sent out from a human but from a bot instead and lead to manipulation of public opinion
What researchers at the University of Southern California also discovered was that the human users were not able to correctly distinguish bots from humans. Human users retweeted bots at the same rate that they retweeted human, even the researchers themselves were not able to distinguish the difference. For example, bots distributed fake news such as, Democrats being able to vote on another day than Republicans, that Clinton had a stroke during the final week of the election and that Hilary was holding children captive within a pizza parlor. The last story led a man by the name of, Edgar M. Welch, to drove six hours from his home to Comet Ping Pong, to see the situation for himself. At the pizzeria, he fired an assault rifle in anger which lead to customers fleeing the restaurant. Mr.Welch would later hand himself in to the police when noticing nothing was true as the article stated and told the police, he was armed to help rescue children. He was later charged with four counts, including felony assault with a deadly weapon and carrying a gun without a license outside a home or business. The pizzeria example may have been taken to the extreme yet it was the cause of fake news spread from a bot. Most of the activity is unrecognizable to a regular user, which leads them to believe an actual person tweeted or retweeted the news.
Since bot activity has the potential of changing your perception,thoughts and ideas of the election this is why it is such a powerful tool.Retweeting bot’s content without first verifying its accuracy has real consequences, including spreading rumors, conspiracy theories or misinformation. Several bots are simple while others just retweet content produced by human supports. Other bots are more specific and produce new tweets, jump into conversations between two humans by using the current trending hashtags such as #NeverHillary or #Never Trump. From the perspective of a real user who is unaware of the existence of bots or they are communicating with a bot the hashtags and tweet content will seamlessly be blended with the tweets produced by actual users. Given that bots produce content automatically, bots formed consistent and pervasive parts of the online discussions based throughout the campaign from this bots were able to build significant discussion throughout the campaign, significant influence and gathered the attention and large number of followers by having their tweets retweeted by millions of actual users(The conversation).
Creating a bot may seem as a daunting task for some but it actually requires little to no computer knowledge. A simple Google search will list thousands of tutorials on how to create a fully-fledged computer bot that is capable of retweeting, liking, tweeting, following, and direct messaging a Twitter user from a specific keyword or keyphrase. In order to see how simple the process was, I created my own Twitter bot from Amit Agarwal’s online tutorial, “How to Write a Twitter Bot in 5 Minutes”(2). At the end of the tutorial I was able to create a Twitter bot that liked every single tweet that contained the phrase “CSUMB”. The results were astonishing as less than a minute I began seeing my bot “like” tweets from CSUMB students and faculty. Furthermore I switched the action from “liking” to replying the phrase “CSUMB ROCKS!” to those exact same tweets and the same results occurred. Within less than an hour I had creating a Twitter bot that could automate any social media task I wished, fortunately this was just an experiment but others intentions may not be the same. A developer who wishes to circulate fake news about a particular candidate or spread fake news can easily create tens, hundreds or even thousands of bots to simulate that task while to the public eye the bot will appear as a regular Twitter user engaging in online politics.
With every form of emerging and prevalent technology there is both the beneficial side and harmful side. It may seem as if the only effect a bot can have on our life is damaging but they can also prove to be quite useful. Together as a society we have come to accept bots when they provide one of their most useful features quick automation. @DearAssistant, is a Twitter bot that acts like a virtual assistant, the same way Siri or Google Now does within a phone but for Twitter. Any user can tweet a question to the bot and @DearAssistant will reply with a detailed answer within a short amount of time. The general public isn't the only one benefiting from bots as companies such as Uber are using bots. Users can tweet to @WhatTheFare if they wish to find out the Uber fare between their current location and their destination. Bots can even begin to perform tasks that are too tiresome such as customer service. Chegg, an American online textbook rental company, utilizes a Twitter bot to both answer frequently asked questions and provide accessibly and fast customer service. One can tweet a question either directly to the bot or direct message the bot but the end result will be the same, a user will be receiving a reliable answer the same way one would if they were calling the company. One of the most impressive bots is @bsdetectorapp, which found its most usage during the election. Its main function is to alert users of unreliable news sources, although it is primarily a browser extension,users can tweet to @bsdetectorapp and ask if the content they are reading is reliable. Without a doubt, bots are becoming highly innovative, can replace the repetitive tasks one performs while perform at an effective rate,are the way of the future and seek to enhance everyday life online.
Twitter bots will continue to exist unless some type of action is taken upon them. Given that spam bots is one of the most annoying and reported inconvenience, it would be a shame for Twitter to not listen to its users. This leads to Twitter taking some sort of action on Twitter bots not because its users are complaining but because it is the right thing to do. Since Twitter alone has the power and technology to take immediate action it would be in their best duty to do so following Kantian Ethics. Kantian ethics is a several moral/ethical theory created by Immanuel Kant and is a form of deontology, which means judgement is contained on the action alone. It follows a method for deriving moral rules and guidelines along with a justification and criteria for evaluating the specific moral value of an action. Kantian Ethics has what is known as the categorical imperative which meant, what is right is right and what is wrong is wrong there is no in betweens. Furthermore, an action should only be done if we can imagine a world where if everyone were to do that action it would be acceptable. Given that we cannot think a world where not listening to your company's users as an acceptable action, this would mean Twitter has to take some form of action.
One possible action is to restrict the usage bots have to the API and to improve their policies. This seems to be the approach Twitter is currently taking as of April 6,2017 Twitter changed the way response tweets are ranked. Previously Twitter replies appeared in chronological order, the first person to reply would be the first tweet everyone would see. Since bots are constantly searching for tweets that meets their keyphrase, bots would be able to reply much faster than anyone with a keyboard could. Now the first replied you see is determined whether a reply is featured within your network(meaning you follow them, or they know someone who follows you, the author from the tweet replied, and number of likes and responses the tweet received. This change alone has substantially raised the visibility of legitimate tweets as opposed to bots. With this approach Twitter would ensure that bots would remain on their network but the influence and effects they have on users would be limited.
Another tactic that can be used to limit the activity of spam bots is to utilize a spam bot detector. If a regular spam bot searches Twitter for a keyphrase, why not have a bot check for high volumes of tweets tweeted from the same location? Twitter can create its own army of bots to hunt down spam bots but instead of removing them completely, report them so an engineer can determine if it is actually a spam bot. With this approach Twitter can slowly but surely begin eliminating spam bots without removing the beneficial service bots that please users.
Not taking any form of action is also taking action. With every possible form of counterattack Twitter may chose to do so, there is also the possibility of Twitter stepping aside and doing completely nothing. It would be in their best interest to focus on other important matters than worrying about fake news and spam bots. Yet with this very action, they would knowingly be displeasing their entire audience. This decision would allow spam bots to flourish as developers would see no consequence from Twitter and continue to spread fake news and rumors. Given that Twitter has the power to make a change, not doing so would be unethical as they would not be following their duty as stated in Kantian ethics. A drastic change would occur within a user’s timeline. As more and more bots are created, the continued use of their retweets will manage to reach a vast amount of users. In the likely case of a user seeing a tweet they relate and agree with could result in a follow of the particular bot. What this would later create is a powerful form of homophily on user’s timeline. Homophily is defined as the tendency of individuals to associate and bond with similar others. A homophilic timeline would result in users only seeing the content they wish to see and ignoring the rest, following users with a similar mindset and relatable tweets. This might sound as a great thing at first but can have disastrous long term effects on a person’s thoughts and perception. Specifically within the presidential election, since there was a great deal of of pro Trump bots and tweets many of those tweets made it to a user’s timeline and to a potential follow. Unless the programming changes, that bot will continue to promote and support Donald Trump, the user will be affected by the consistent tweeting in a way that they will only see one side of the argument and never the other. This leads to a fixed mindset and inability to accept opposing viewpoints. By Twitter not taking action toward Twitter bots they allow the spam to continue while leading their user’s to a homophilic timeline that will be hard to escape from.
There exist a vast amount of actions Twitter can take to tackle bots, with both of the previously mentioned approaches being examples. Personally I would like the first approach to be taken but with a slight alternative and additional procedures . Creating a bot army that reports a possible bot is possible but would much more effective if bots contained the technology of BotOrNot. This particular bot army would now be able to provide statistics to engineers and Twitter developers that will make the decision between removing or allowing the account to remain much easier and smoother.
In addition to this, provide a small incentive for users to report bot accounts. Twitter can create thousands of bots but there is always the probability of a false positive occurring, a human user will be able to provide a much better estimate than a bot could to a certain extent. Twitter could create a reporter program for users wishing to partake with the incentive being earning a free t-shirt, hoodie or hat for a specific amount of valid reports. Depending on users to report bots would not be the best approach but with an incentive, users will be more inclined to report rather than to just ignore the bot.
Furthermore, this approach can be strengthened by having API(Application programming interface) restrictions tailored to ceasing bot activity. A form of this is having a more in depth background check of user’s. As of right now, there is a background check along with a small waiting period before a developer can begin having access to the API. This can be extending by having the developer list which features of the API the will be using and the rationale behind it. At the end of the signing up process what the developer listed will be created into a document and this document will serve as a contract between the two. If the developer would like to make changes to the contract such as a change of features he will need to request them and wait approval from Twitter. A small caveat of this approach is that it will lead to a time-consuming process to access the Twitter API but will allow Twitter to keep a log of which developers are using which features and allow a smarter detection and faster account termination if they view it as spam bot activity.
Before the presidential election, I had no idea a bot could exist for the sole purpose of manipulating the public opinion. Furthermore, I had never even thought of a bot being on social media, I could only imagine a bot within a factory or in the form of a script. After conducting extensive research, reading the stories and effects of bots I am able foresee a future where bots are restricted yet have enough freedom to automate dreadful and repetitive tasks for humans.
CST 373 - Ethics in Comm & Tech
Professor Scott
20 April 2017
Did Twitter Bots Influence the Political Election?
More than ever before, a big part of the presidential election has played itself out on social media. Without a doubt presidential candidates, utilize their social media accounts to promote themselves and their campaigns. Social media is a powerful tool when used correctly that can both benefit the candidate or harm the candidate’s reputation and is a strong factor within the final outcome of the presidential election. Candidates tend to tweet campaign promises, where they will be speaking, or to simply connect with their supporters. Given that 44% of U.S. adults learn about the presidential election from social media which outpaces both local and national print newspapers, a positive social media presence contributes to reaching more voters. In addition to this, due to the immense amount of information and opinions we form comes from social media it is possible to manipulate the network in order to control the public's opinion. This leads to the phenomenon known as bots. A bot is an automated application used to perform simple and repetitive tasks that would otherwise be too time-consuming for a typical human to perform according to technopedia (1). One may have encountered a bot through Apple’s Siri or Amazon’s Alexa or Microsoft's Zo chatbot, bots are increasingly being used. Specifically for Twitter, a bot can be used to “like”, retweet, direct message and follow any user online. Throughout the 2016 presidential campaign, automated networks of social-media bots spread erroneous information to potential voters—often to the benefit of Trump and therefore played a strong factor in the elections outcome and for that very reason, leads to the question, should bots be allowed on Twitter and other social media sites?
As with any issue, there exist people or individuals that are affected by it. The first and most obvious is Twitter the corporation with the most at stake being their reputation. Twitter is known for deliver breaking news, 140 character count interactive messages and for trending topics.Yet that stable reputation is being converting into a fake news and spam bot filled website. Over time, users will begin to associate Twitter with bots and spam which in result will bring the company a loss of revenue and loss of audience.
If Twitter is affected by bots the general users of Twitter are surely affected by them as well. One of the biggest reasons users decide to use Twitter is for the ability to tweet and discover users who share similar interest with you, see trending topics around the world engage in conversation. Bots ruin all three of those features which in return will ruin the entire experience for users leading them to utilize another form of social media.
One overlooked stakeholder is the community of developers. A developer in this context is both one with good intentions and one with harmful intentions. Both of them are developing some type of software that has an effect on themselves and on Twitter and their users.
Lastly, since we are viewing this from the presidential perspective, the presidential candidates were deeply affected by bots during the presidential campaign. Bots could either support and damage the reputation of a presidential candidate which in return will affect the overall outcome of the election.
A very important key to democracy is the engagement from the public especially when that engagement is a discussion among each other free from outside influence and open,honest opinions. More and more people are deciding to speak your voice online, yet what happens when an immense number of participants are actually biased bots? As it turns out, many of the political content we see online every day is actually not human produced content but rather computer generated content. According to “How Twitter bots played a role in electing Donald Trump”, one in every give election-related tweets from September 16 to October 21 was generated by bots. To put this into perspective it was found that more than 400,000 bots were retweeting and tweeting during the election with Donald having one-third of his followers being bots and Hillary having a quarter of her followers be bots according to Oxford University professor,Sam Woolley. These bots are responsible for more than 20% of the total election tweets. This means that most of the political tweets one saw on his or her timeline were not sent out from a human but from a bot instead and lead to manipulation of public opinion
What researchers at the University of Southern California also discovered was that the human users were not able to correctly distinguish bots from humans. Human users retweeted bots at the same rate that they retweeted human, even the researchers themselves were not able to distinguish the difference. For example, bots distributed fake news such as, Democrats being able to vote on another day than Republicans, that Clinton had a stroke during the final week of the election and that Hilary was holding children captive within a pizza parlor. The last story led a man by the name of, Edgar M. Welch, to drove six hours from his home to Comet Ping Pong, to see the situation for himself. At the pizzeria, he fired an assault rifle in anger which lead to customers fleeing the restaurant. Mr.Welch would later hand himself in to the police when noticing nothing was true as the article stated and told the police, he was armed to help rescue children. He was later charged with four counts, including felony assault with a deadly weapon and carrying a gun without a license outside a home or business. The pizzeria example may have been taken to the extreme yet it was the cause of fake news spread from a bot. Most of the activity is unrecognizable to a regular user, which leads them to believe an actual person tweeted or retweeted the news.
Since bot activity has the potential of changing your perception,thoughts and ideas of the election this is why it is such a powerful tool.Retweeting bot’s content without first verifying its accuracy has real consequences, including spreading rumors, conspiracy theories or misinformation. Several bots are simple while others just retweet content produced by human supports. Other bots are more specific and produce new tweets, jump into conversations between two humans by using the current trending hashtags such as #NeverHillary or #Never Trump. From the perspective of a real user who is unaware of the existence of bots or they are communicating with a bot the hashtags and tweet content will seamlessly be blended with the tweets produced by actual users. Given that bots produce content automatically, bots formed consistent and pervasive parts of the online discussions based throughout the campaign from this bots were able to build significant discussion throughout the campaign, significant influence and gathered the attention and large number of followers by having their tweets retweeted by millions of actual users(The conversation).
Creating a bot may seem as a daunting task for some but it actually requires little to no computer knowledge. A simple Google search will list thousands of tutorials on how to create a fully-fledged computer bot that is capable of retweeting, liking, tweeting, following, and direct messaging a Twitter user from a specific keyword or keyphrase. In order to see how simple the process was, I created my own Twitter bot from Amit Agarwal’s online tutorial, “How to Write a Twitter Bot in 5 Minutes”(2). At the end of the tutorial I was able to create a Twitter bot that liked every single tweet that contained the phrase “CSUMB”. The results were astonishing as less than a minute I began seeing my bot “like” tweets from CSUMB students and faculty. Furthermore I switched the action from “liking” to replying the phrase “CSUMB ROCKS!” to those exact same tweets and the same results occurred. Within less than an hour I had creating a Twitter bot that could automate any social media task I wished, fortunately this was just an experiment but others intentions may not be the same. A developer who wishes to circulate fake news about a particular candidate or spread fake news can easily create tens, hundreds or even thousands of bots to simulate that task while to the public eye the bot will appear as a regular Twitter user engaging in online politics.
With every form of emerging and prevalent technology there is both the beneficial side and harmful side. It may seem as if the only effect a bot can have on our life is damaging but they can also prove to be quite useful. Together as a society we have come to accept bots when they provide one of their most useful features quick automation. @DearAssistant, is a Twitter bot that acts like a virtual assistant, the same way Siri or Google Now does within a phone but for Twitter. Any user can tweet a question to the bot and @DearAssistant will reply with a detailed answer within a short amount of time. The general public isn't the only one benefiting from bots as companies such as Uber are using bots. Users can tweet to @WhatTheFare if they wish to find out the Uber fare between their current location and their destination. Bots can even begin to perform tasks that are too tiresome such as customer service. Chegg, an American online textbook rental company, utilizes a Twitter bot to both answer frequently asked questions and provide accessibly and fast customer service. One can tweet a question either directly to the bot or direct message the bot but the end result will be the same, a user will be receiving a reliable answer the same way one would if they were calling the company. One of the most impressive bots is @bsdetectorapp, which found its most usage during the election. Its main function is to alert users of unreliable news sources, although it is primarily a browser extension,users can tweet to @bsdetectorapp and ask if the content they are reading is reliable. Without a doubt, bots are becoming highly innovative, can replace the repetitive tasks one performs while perform at an effective rate,are the way of the future and seek to enhance everyday life online.
Twitter bots will continue to exist unless some type of action is taken upon them. Given that spam bots is one of the most annoying and reported inconvenience, it would be a shame for Twitter to not listen to its users. This leads to Twitter taking some sort of action on Twitter bots not because its users are complaining but because it is the right thing to do. Since Twitter alone has the power and technology to take immediate action it would be in their best duty to do so following Kantian Ethics. Kantian ethics is a several moral/ethical theory created by Immanuel Kant and is a form of deontology, which means judgement is contained on the action alone. It follows a method for deriving moral rules and guidelines along with a justification and criteria for evaluating the specific moral value of an action. Kantian Ethics has what is known as the categorical imperative which meant, what is right is right and what is wrong is wrong there is no in betweens. Furthermore, an action should only be done if we can imagine a world where if everyone were to do that action it would be acceptable. Given that we cannot think a world where not listening to your company's users as an acceptable action, this would mean Twitter has to take some form of action.
One possible action is to restrict the usage bots have to the API and to improve their policies. This seems to be the approach Twitter is currently taking as of April 6,2017 Twitter changed the way response tweets are ranked. Previously Twitter replies appeared in chronological order, the first person to reply would be the first tweet everyone would see. Since bots are constantly searching for tweets that meets their keyphrase, bots would be able to reply much faster than anyone with a keyboard could. Now the first replied you see is determined whether a reply is featured within your network(meaning you follow them, or they know someone who follows you, the author from the tweet replied, and number of likes and responses the tweet received. This change alone has substantially raised the visibility of legitimate tweets as opposed to bots. With this approach Twitter would ensure that bots would remain on their network but the influence and effects they have on users would be limited.
Another tactic that can be used to limit the activity of spam bots is to utilize a spam bot detector. If a regular spam bot searches Twitter for a keyphrase, why not have a bot check for high volumes of tweets tweeted from the same location? Twitter can create its own army of bots to hunt down spam bots but instead of removing them completely, report them so an engineer can determine if it is actually a spam bot. With this approach Twitter can slowly but surely begin eliminating spam bots without removing the beneficial service bots that please users.
Not taking any form of action is also taking action. With every possible form of counterattack Twitter may chose to do so, there is also the possibility of Twitter stepping aside and doing completely nothing. It would be in their best interest to focus on other important matters than worrying about fake news and spam bots. Yet with this very action, they would knowingly be displeasing their entire audience. This decision would allow spam bots to flourish as developers would see no consequence from Twitter and continue to spread fake news and rumors. Given that Twitter has the power to make a change, not doing so would be unethical as they would not be following their duty as stated in Kantian ethics. A drastic change would occur within a user’s timeline. As more and more bots are created, the continued use of their retweets will manage to reach a vast amount of users. In the likely case of a user seeing a tweet they relate and agree with could result in a follow of the particular bot. What this would later create is a powerful form of homophily on user’s timeline. Homophily is defined as the tendency of individuals to associate and bond with similar others. A homophilic timeline would result in users only seeing the content they wish to see and ignoring the rest, following users with a similar mindset and relatable tweets. This might sound as a great thing at first but can have disastrous long term effects on a person’s thoughts and perception. Specifically within the presidential election, since there was a great deal of of pro Trump bots and tweets many of those tweets made it to a user’s timeline and to a potential follow. Unless the programming changes, that bot will continue to promote and support Donald Trump, the user will be affected by the consistent tweeting in a way that they will only see one side of the argument and never the other. This leads to a fixed mindset and inability to accept opposing viewpoints. By Twitter not taking action toward Twitter bots they allow the spam to continue while leading their user’s to a homophilic timeline that will be hard to escape from.
There exist a vast amount of actions Twitter can take to tackle bots, with both of the previously mentioned approaches being examples. Personally I would like the first approach to be taken but with a slight alternative and additional procedures . Creating a bot army that reports a possible bot is possible but would much more effective if bots contained the technology of BotOrNot. This particular bot army would now be able to provide statistics to engineers and Twitter developers that will make the decision between removing or allowing the account to remain much easier and smoother.
In addition to this, provide a small incentive for users to report bot accounts. Twitter can create thousands of bots but there is always the probability of a false positive occurring, a human user will be able to provide a much better estimate than a bot could to a certain extent. Twitter could create a reporter program for users wishing to partake with the incentive being earning a free t-shirt, hoodie or hat for a specific amount of valid reports. Depending on users to report bots would not be the best approach but with an incentive, users will be more inclined to report rather than to just ignore the bot.
Furthermore, this approach can be strengthened by having API(Application programming interface) restrictions tailored to ceasing bot activity. A form of this is having a more in depth background check of user’s. As of right now, there is a background check along with a small waiting period before a developer can begin having access to the API. This can be extending by having the developer list which features of the API the will be using and the rationale behind it. At the end of the signing up process what the developer listed will be created into a document and this document will serve as a contract between the two. If the developer would like to make changes to the contract such as a change of features he will need to request them and wait approval from Twitter. A small caveat of this approach is that it will lead to a time-consuming process to access the Twitter API but will allow Twitter to keep a log of which developers are using which features and allow a smarter detection and faster account termination if they view it as spam bot activity.
Before the presidential election, I had no idea a bot could exist for the sole purpose of manipulating the public opinion. Furthermore, I had never even thought of a bot being on social media, I could only imagine a bot within a factory or in the form of a script. After conducting extensive research, reading the stories and effects of bots I am able foresee a future where bots are restricted yet have enough freedom to automate dreadful and repetitive tasks for humans.