• Home
  • Anti-Corruption
  • Fact-Check
  • Economy
  • National
    • Government
  • Security
  • Features
  • State
  • Event
    • PR Nigeria Award
  • E-Paper
Search
  • Home
  • About
  • Adverts
  • Contact
Sign in
Welcome! Log into your account
Forgot your password? Get help
Password recovery
Recover your password
A password will be e-mailed to you.
PRNIGERIA PRNigeria News
PRNIGERIA PRNIGERIA
  • Home
  • Anti-Corruption
    • Mohammed Idris Malagi, Honorable Minister of Information and National Orientation

      FG Reaffirms Non-Interference in ICPC, EFCC Operations

      ICPC Secures Conviction of Rector for Running Unaccredited Degree Programmes

      Engr Abba Babagana Dalori

      Engr Dalori Forfeits Galaxy Hospital, Petrol Station, Properties & Cash

      Chinese nationals jailed in Lagos

      Court Jails Nine Chinese Nationals for Cybercrime in Lagos

      ASUU

      Tackle Corruption, Institutional Decay – ASUU Charges FG

  • Fact-Check
  • Economy
    • NUPENG

      NUPENG Suspends Strike After Truce With FG, Labour, Oil Stakeholders

      Customs, Defence Bureau Unveil Airboat for Smuggling War

      Customs Begins Live Operations of Automated Excise Register System

      Still on the “National Single Window” Project By Abdulsalam Mahmud

      Minister of Finance Wale Edun and the Comptroller General of Customs Bashir Adeniyi decorating OP Olaniyan

      Customs Generates N3.7trn in H1 2025 as FG Targets Enhanced Private…

  • National
    • Officers of NSCDC Mining Marshals

      Mining Marshals and the Fight for Nigeria’s Mineral Future By Zekeri…

      NIPR Inducts 422 New Members, Urges Commitment to National Unity

      Renewed Hope and the Broadening Public Sphere By Ahmed Balarabe Sa’id

      FG to Schools: Get Certified Teachers or Lose WAEC Accreditation

      Troops Eliminate Terrorist, Rescue Kidnap Victims in Sokoto, Katsina, Kaduna

    • Government
      • Renewed Hope and the Broadening Public Sphere By Ahmed Balarabe Sa’id

        FG to Schools: Get Certified Teachers or Lose WAEC Accreditation

        ECOWAS debt: Court Remands Ecobank Legal Head over Perjury, defamation of…

        Femi Fani-Kayode FFK

        Fani-Kayode Denies Interest in NFA Chairmanship

        Food Items

        Crash Food Prices – Tinubu Orders FEC Committee

  • Security
    • Inspector-General of Police Kayode Adeolu Egbetokun

      Police Chief Tasks Border Patrol Commanders on Enhanced Security

      Air Marshal Hasan Abubakar NAF Chief

      Air Chief Links Fiscal Discipline to Nigeria’s National Security, Operational Readiness

      Army Arrest Notorious Cattle Rustlers, Recover Arms in Plateau

      Troops Repel Bandits’ Attacks in Kaduna, Katsina, Recover Rustled Cattle

      Officers of NSCDC Mining Marshals

      Mining Marshals and the Fight for Nigeria’s Mineral Future By Zekeri…

  • Features
    • Officers of NSCDC Mining Marshals

      Mining Marshals and the Fight for Nigeria’s Mineral Future By Zekeri…

      Omoyele Sowore, Bayo Ononuga and Adeola Ajayi

      Sowore’s Provocation, Onanuga’s Plea and the DSS Overreach

      Renewed Hope and the Broadening Public Sphere By Ahmed Balarabe Sa’id

      Traffic officials tolling the vehicle at the scene in Abuja

      SPECIAL REPORT: Extortion, Blood and Impunity Behind Abuja’s Agbero Menace

      MUST READ: Why Everyone Should Use AI for Writing, With Pride…

  • State
    • Inspector-General of Police Kayode Adeolu Egbetokun

      Police Chief Tasks Border Patrol Commanders on Enhanced Security

      Army Arrest Notorious Cattle Rustlers, Recover Arms in Plateau

      Troops Repel Bandits’ Attacks in Kaduna, Katsina, Recover Rustled Cattle

      Military Troops in Action

      Army Rescue 17 Kidnap Victims in Kogi State

      His Royal Highness, the Emir of Ilorin and Chairman, Kwara State Council of Chiefs, Alhaji (Dr) Ibrahim Sulu-Gambari,

      Emir of Ilorin, CP Lead Special Prayers Against Insecurity in Kwara

  • Event
    • NIPR Inducts 422 New Members, Urges Commitment to National Unity

      Baze University Management visits TETFUND, Showcases Tech-Driven Growth, National Impact

      PHOTOS: BUK Alumni Association Launches Digital Hub to Unite Global Graduates,…

      Founder Image Merchant Promotion Ltd, Yushau Shuaib, Nigeria Customs CG, CGC Bashir Adewale Adeniyi and the IPRA representative during the 2024 GWA awards in Belgrade, Serbia

      Again, ​IPRA Shortlists Nigeria Customs, IMPR for Golden World Awards, Celebrates…

      BUKAA Announces 2025 AGM at BUK New Campus: Join In-Person or…

    • PR Nigeria Award
  • E-Paper

    Do You Know There Are Billions of Social Media Bots Designed to Mimic Humans? Here’s How to Spot Them

    By
    Mohammad Dahiru Lawal
    -
    August 25, 2021

    Do You Know There Are Billions of Social Media Bots Designed to Mimic Humans? Here’s How to Spot Them

    “Bots” — automated social media accounts which pose as real people — have a huge presence on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. They number in the billions. 

    Most fake social media accounts are “bots,” created by automated programs to post certain kinds of information as part of an effort to manipulate social conversations. Sophisticated actors can create millions of accounts using the same program.

    These bots can seriously distort debate, especially when they work together. They can be used to make a phrase or hashtag trend and they can be used to amplify or attack a message or article and even harass other users.

    Recently, social media giant, Facebook, claims it disabled a staggering figure of more than three billion fake accounts over a six-month period. 

    One study by researchers at the University of Southern California analyzed US election-related tweets sent in September and October 2016 and found that 1 in 5 were sent by a bot. The Pew Research Center concluded in a 2018 study that accounts suspected of being bots are responsible for as many as two-thirds of all tweets that link to popular websites.

    In the social media context, these autonomous programs can run accounts to spread content without human involvement. Many are harmless, tweeting out random poems or pet photos. But others are up to no good and are designed to resemble actual users.

    Bots “don’t just manipulate the conversation, they build groups and bridge groups,” said Carnegie Mellon University computer scientist Kathleen Carley, who has researched social media bots.

    “They can make people in one group believe they think the same thing as people in another group, and in doing so they build echo chambers.”

    In the run up to the 2023 general election, it has already become incumbent on social media users to acquaint themselves with tips and tricks of social media bots as misinformation and disinformation appear in political ads or social media posts. They can include fake news stories or doctored videos among wider and far reaching public interest implications. 

    Many bots are relatively easy to spot by eyeball, without access to specialized software or commercial analytical tools. This article sets out a dozen of the clues, which can be found useful in exposing fake accounts.

     

    Read Also:

    • Police Chief Tasks Border Patrol Commanders on Enhanced Security
    • Air Chief Links Fiscal Discipline to Nigeria’s National Security, Operational Readiness
    • Army Arrest Notorious Cattle Rustlers, Recover Arms in Plateau
    • Activity: The most obvious indicator that an account is automated is its activity. This can readily be calculated by looking at its profile page and dividing the number of posts by the number of days it has been active. The benchmark for suspicious activity varies. The Oxford Internet Institute’s Computational Propaganda team, views an average of more than 50 posts a day as suspicious; this is a widely recognized and applied benchmark, but may be on the low side.
    • Anonymity: A second key indicator is the degree of anonymity an account shows. In general, the less personal information it gives, the more likely it is to be a bot.
    • Amplification: The third key indicator is amplification. One main role of bots is to boost the signal from other users by resharing, retweeting, liking or quoting them. The timeline of a typical bot will, therefore, consist of a procession of reshares or retweets and word-for-word quotes of news headlines, with few or no original posts.
      1. Low posts / high results: Bots achieve their effect by the massive amplification of content by a single account. In Twitter for example, they create a large number of accounts which retweet the same post once each: a botnet. Such botnets can quickly be identified when they are used to amplify a single post, if the account which made the post is not normally active.
      2. Common content: The probability that accounts belong to a single network can be confirmed by looking at their posts. If they all post the same content, or type of content, at the same time, they are probably programmed to do so.
      3. The Secret Society of Silhouettes: The most primitive bots are especially easy to identify, because their creators have not bothered to upload an avatar or profile image to them. Some users have silhouettes on their accounts for entirely innocuous reasons; thus the presence of a silhouette account on its own is not an indicator of botness. However, if the list of accounts which retweet, reshare, or like a post looks the same, it’s a red flag. 
      4. Stolen or shared photo: Other bot makers are more meticulous, and try to mask their anonymity by taking photos from other sources. A good test of an account’s veracity is therefore to reverse search its avatar picture. Using Google Chrome, right-click on the image and select “Search Google for Image”. Using other browsers, right-click the image, select “Copy Image Address”, enter the address in a Google search and click “Search by image”. In either case, the search will show up pages with matching images, indicating whether the account is likely to have stolen its avatar:
    • Commercial content: Advertising, indeed, is a classic indicator of botnets. Some botnets appear to exist primarily for that purpose, only occasionally venturing into politics. When they do, their focus on advertising often betrays them.
    1. Automation software: Another clue to potential automation is the use of URL shorteners. These are primarily used to track traffic on a particular link, but the frequency with which they are used can be an indicator of automation.
    2. Retweets/Reshares and likes: A final indicator that a botnet is at work can be gathered by comparing the retweets and likes of a particular post. Some bots are programmed to both retweet and like the same tweet; in such cases, the number of retweets and likes will be almost identical, and the series of accounts which performed the retweets and likes may also match. 

    Bots are an inevitable part of social media, especially twitter. Some exist for legitimate reasons, others don’t. Notwithstanding, the most common indicators to detect them are activity, anonymity, and amplification, the “Three A’s” of bot identification, but other criteria also exist.

    The researcher produced this media literacy article per the Dubawa 2021 Kwame Kari Kari Fellowship partnership with PRNigeria to facilitate the ethos of “truth” in journalism and enhance media literacy in the country.

    VISIT OUR OTHER WEBSITES
    PRNigeria.com EconomicConfidential.com PRNigeria.com/Hausa/
    EmergencyDigest.com PoliticsDigest.ng TechDigest.ng
    HealthDigest.ng SpokesPersonsdigest.com TeensDigest.ng
    ArewaAgenda.com Hausa.ArewaAgenda.com YAShuaib.com
    • TAGS
    • Disinformation
    • election
    • Fake News
    • Misinformation
    • prnigeria
    • Social Media Bots
    Previous articleAudacity of fake news: Army recruiting Boko Haram members? By Fredrick Nwabufo
    Next articleNIPR Endorses Female Advocacy for Inter-Ethnic Relations
    Mohammad Dahiru Lawal
    Mohammad Dahiru Lawal

    RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

    Omoyele Sowore, Bayo Ononuga and Adeola Ajayi

    Sowore’s Provocation, Onanuga’s Plea and the DSS Overreach

    Police Nab ‘Obi of Lagos,’ Foil ₦1.5 Billion New Palace Fraud

    FACT-CHECK: Did Governor Uba Sani describe El-Rufai as “Godsent” who assisted him with various needs, including property acquisitions and even against Peter Obi?

    The Arrest of Ansaru Kingpins Mahmud Muhammad Usman aka Abu Bara’a, and Mahmud al-Nigeri aka Mallam Mamuda

    DSS Secures 15-Year Jail Term for Ansaru Leader Over Illegal Mining

    Mrs Diiarau Didi Esther Walson-Jack OON mni, SEC 30, 2008, the new Head of the Civil Service of the Federation

    Personnel Audit to End Guesswork in Civil Service Reforms – Walson-Jack

    Nigerian Army Rescues Abducted Major in Delta State

    AFIT graduates

    AFIT Produces 302 New Personnel to Boost Air Force Technical Capacity

    Brig Gen Mohamed Buba Marwa (rtd)

    Marwa: The Tormentor of Untouchable Drug Lords By Yushau A. Shuaib

    Customs Recruitment: 286,697 Applicants to Sit for Online Test

    Senator Shehu Umar Buba

    Northern Youth Coalition Defends Senator Buba, Condemns Smear Campaigns

    AU, Nigeria Sign MoU to Bolster Counter-Terrorism Efforts

    Military troops

    Niger Delta Operations: Troops Arrest 35, Recover Arms and Stolen Oil

    Recent Posts

    • Police Chief Tasks Border Patrol Commanders on Enhanced Security
    • Air Chief Links Fiscal Discipline to Nigeria’s National Security, Operational Readiness
    • Army Arrest Notorious Cattle Rustlers, Recover Arms in Plateau
    • Troops Repel Bandits’ Attacks in Kaduna, Katsina, Recover Rustled Cattle
    • Mining Marshals and the Fight for Nigeria’s Mineral Future By Zekeri Idakwo Laruba
    • Home
    • About
    • Adverts
    • Contact
    © 2020 PRNigeria. All Rights Reserved.
    Latest News
    Police Chief Tasks Border Patrol Commanders on Enhanced SecurityAir Chief Links Fiscal Discipline to Nigeria’s National Security, Operational ReadinessArmy Arrest Notorious Cattle Rustlers, Recover Arms in PlateauTroops Repel Bandits’ Attacks in Kaduna, Katsina, Recover Rustled CattleMining Marshals and the Fight for Nigeria’s Mineral Future By Zekeri Idakwo LarubaNIPR Inducts 422 New Members, Urges Commitment to National UnitySowore’s Provocation, Onanuga’s Plea and the DSS OverreachNigerian Troops Intercept Ransom Money, Recover 160 Rustled CattlePolice Nab 'Obi of Lagos,' Foil ₦1.5 Billion New Palace FraudRenewed Hope and the Broadening Public Sphere By Ahmed Balarabe Sa’idArmy Rescue 17 Kidnap Victims in Kogi StateFG to Schools: Get Certified Teachers or Lose WAEC AccreditationEmir of Ilorin, CP Lead Special Prayers Against Insecurity in KwaraTroops Eliminate Terrorist, Rescue Kidnap Victims in Sokoto, Katsina, KadunaECOWAS debt: Court Remands Ecobank Legal Head over Perjury, defamation of Judge character
    X whatsapp