How do you recognize fake accounts on Twitter?

The Atlantic Council has published an article by senior fellow, Ben Nimmo, that teaches a „total start to finish“ method of recognizing bots and fake accounts on Twitter.

The published material is worthwhile reading, as in the last couple of years the Twitter community has been a leader and influencer of important processes, while at the same time containing a substantially large amount of robot accounts.

Nimmo writes that; „Bots – automated social media accounts that present themselves as people – are frequent on Twitter. There are millions of them and their networks can include a million interconnected accounts.

Bots can dramatically sway debates, especially when they work together. They can be used to make an expression or key word popular, as DFRLab has previously shown; they can be used to amplify a message or article; they can be used to attack a message or other users.“

In the third quarter of 2017, Twitter had ca 330 000 000 active accounts, of which approximately 15% were fake accounts.