How to spot an election bot as fake accounts flood social media

The UK General Election is just days away, but a lot of the conversation around it is being influenced by bot-like accounts. 

An investigation from the non-governmental organisation (NGO) Global Witness found that ten accounts have shared more than 60,000 posts since the General Election was announced on May 22. 

And it has been estimated that these posts have been seen around 150 million times.

The organisation said that many of the posts from the 10 accounts contain ‘extreme and violent’ hate speech, disinformation and conspiracy theories. 

Global Witness said posts from the bot-like accounts have amplified views such as Islamophobia, antisemitism, homophobia and transphobia, state that climate change is a ‘hoax’, that vaccines have created a ‘genocide’, and that Russian President Vladimir Putin is ‘the greatest president ever’.

The investigation found the bot-like accounts by searching hashtags on migration and climate change covering a wide spectrum of views, from #welcomerefugees to #migration and #stoptheboats.

Ava Lee, campaign leader at Global Witness, said: ‘Political discussion online is often toxic – we all know that.

‘But when we go on social media, we believe we’re seeing what real people think. While we might not agree with it, we trust that what we see are genuine views held by other voters.

‘When that’s not true, when the conversation may have been influenced by someone who has paid for bots to spread division or to get a particular party into power, our democracy is in jeopardy.

‘The UK is going to the polls in under a week. The US in four months. Half the world’s population this year. X, and all social media companies, need to clean up their platforms and put our democracies before profit.’

How can you spot a bot account?

There are a few easy giveaways that suggest you’re looking at a bot. 

Bot accounts often turn out a large number of posts a day, but they are rarely original content, and are often re-posted from other accounts. They may also just be the same post repeated, but using different hashtags. 

The user profile may have a handle that ends in a long string of numbers, suggesting that the account holder used the default account name provided by X instead of creating their own unique account name. 

These accounts also often have no profile picture, or one that seems to have been created by AI or stolen from elsewhere. Often the handle name and picture are an unlikely match, such as the username @AdamG9839589 and a picture of a young woman.

And despite posting a lot of times a day, the accounts generally have few followers, and often won’t be following many people either. Bot accounts are also often very new, having only recently joined the platform.

Global Witness said that while one or two ‘red flags’ by themselves do not create any suspicion, three or more – especially when at least one of those red flags is that the account tweets practically all the time – could.

Therefore, it is reasonable to suspect that the account may be partially or fully automated. 

Metro.co.uk has contacted X for a comment