: Those robots who like and forward your content on social software may only be robots. A University of Southern California study showed that as many as 15% of Twitter accounts are actually robots, not real humans.
Researchers identified more than a thousand functions to identify accounts on Twitter, including their friends, content, and emotions reflected and the time between each tweet. Through this framework, researchers claim to have found that 9%-15% of Twitter accounts are robots.
Considering that Twitter now has approximately 319 million monthly active users, this ratio means nearly 48 million robots.
At the same time, the report stated that due to the complexity of the robot, complex robots may also be identified as humans under this detection model, and the 15% figure is only a conservative estimate.
This kind of robot user may bring new challenges to the growth of so-called Internet companies (Facebook, Snap). According to Twitter's filing documents with the SEC last month, it claimed that about 8.5% of the company's active users may not be real humans, which means 20 million robot accounts.
Given analysts' concerns about the growth of Internet companies' users, this can be very troublesome. Nomura analysts said that because revenue growth has slowed to a median, Twitter is doing its best to grow new subscribers. Now people are asking new questions when observing the growth of corporate users: How many of these are real people?
Although robot accounts have inherent advantages and benefits in the dissemination of news and publications. However, it may also be used to send spam and create fake grass-roots propaganda, promote terrorist propaganda and recruitment.