Twitter and the Fakes

Twitter is the streaming consciousness of the world. I'm convinced of it and follow a lot of what is going on very closely thanks to it.  We've seen its impact in strange ways and good ways.  The immediacy is amazing.  Simply no better way for mass communication of simple ideas.  Yet that immediacy can be an issue too.

What if some of the accounts on Twitter are fake accounts to help distribute a fake idea?

What if 48 million accounts are fake and whole waves of "news" can be faked, moving markets, pushing public opinion, and forcing action?

Scary.

Read on:

http://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/10/nearly-48-million-twitter-accounts-could-be-bots-says-study.html

Here is a snippet from the piece:

A big chunk of those "likes," "retweets," and "followers" lighting up your Twitter account may not be coming from human hands. According to new research from the University of Southern California and Indiana University, up to 15 percent of Twitter accounts are in fact bots rather than people.

The research could be troubling news for Twitter, which has struggled to grow its user base in the face of growing competition from Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and others.

Happy Reading,

J.W. Gant