Hackers Are So Fed Up with Twitter Bots They’re Hunting Them Down Themselves

If I may make a suggestion, and I'm not sure what your use-case plans are for it -- maybe this isn't feasible for you, but if you absolutely MUST use Twitter, do not install it on your phone. Keep it to just the desktop website version. My reasons for suggesting this are three-fold: 1) Twitter at it's core is, IMO, nothing but a distraction. You will be less productive and less interactive with real people in real life. 2) The Internet Fuckwad Theory is in full effect in the Twitter-verse at all times. Depending on your personality, it may very well make you more depressed/mad/whatever -- it's not going to change your daily life for the better at any rate. 3) Twitter tracks you & harvests your data, and if you install it on your phone they will have much more data about/from you -- and we (as in, everyone on the planet) do not need any more tracking/spying/snooping/etc.

> Then why not tackle the root problem?: Lack of critical thinking skills. I'm not from the US, so I don't know how extensive their philosophy courses are in school, but judging by these repetitive "Russians/bots are manipulating our people" headlines, it's probably lacking.

Because that's not the root problem. This is all a dog and pony show.

There is no transparent mechanism of control for internet publishing like there is for e.g. broadcast media via FCC licensure. The government very much wants to rein in this "Wild West" age of the internet and assert some control over the messaging.

Conditions are very favorable for such a project right now:

a) Centralization on walled gardens like Facebook, Google, et al provides a plausible choke point.

[Right now they're making everything else online "dirty", "bad", and/or "Russian", but don't be surprised when they ban it all together and anything non-Google-or-Facebook-approved becomes part of the "dark web", meaning the place that only dirty, bad Russians go, and which will effectively require special communication equipment to access. Wikileaks is a great case study in this.]

b) There's sufficient angst among the tech-savvy public to fly such controls in under the ironic pretext of "preserving the integrity of our democracy" without stirring up too much of a ruckus.

and c) The mainstream media is looking for any plausible cover story they can find after their disastrous and embarrassing coverage of the 2016 election and will go along with anything that will allow them to save a shred of face. That it paints their main competition (hyper-specialized online media) as dirty and unreliable is a bonus.

This is all very bad stuff, and that people are so easily tricked into following along because they're bitter about a political loss is as deeply disappointing as it is predictable.

I expect that the government will eventually move to establish a set of "identity verification standards" that have to be met or the site will be taken offline by court order. This will essentially end free speech on the web and allow the government to assert its control over what normal people are allowed to access, read, and/or share online.

Bottom line is that you don't have to be a Russian double-agent to be a Republican, and you don't have to be the victim of a pernicious foreign plot to lose an election against the other national political party. If you live in the Silicon Valley bubble, don't let your frustration delude you into believing otherwise.

I think there should be two potential badges for twitter users: 1) Verified identity (as you described) 2) Suspected bot

And you should be able to filter out posts accordingly, like "only showed verified" or "don't show suspected bots".

And by default, Twitter should hide suspected bots in reply/hashtag threads, so they don't get increased exposure.

While there are issues with Twitter not doing enough to ban bots, the platform is a festinating example of the complexity of balancing free speech and censorship.

You know, the best metaphor I've heard, and how I've started treating it ever since: Twitter is like a cocktail party that you can enter and leave any time of the day, for as long or as short as you'd like. You might participate in some interesting conversations, you might learn about something new, and then when you're done you can leave.

The thing you don't want to do is try to keep up with every tweet. Just follow a bunch of people you find interesting, and once in a while pop in and see what people are talking about.