A massive network of fake accounts are clogging up Twitter, according to new research.
UK analysts accidentally uncovered more than 350,000 bogus accounts used to fabricate follower numbers, send spam, and boost interest in trending topics.
Most people sign onto the social networking site to share thoughts, photos, and where to find the best hot dogs in New York City. But legions of automated accounts, or bots, can serve as political propaganda or facilitate trades on the black market.
In this case, 350,000 bots exclusively post random quotes from Star Wars novels—often with incomplete sentences or broken words at the beginning or end. This ensures messages appear as if they are written by real humans (who don't understand character counts).
Despite Twitter's regular efforts to remove suspicious users, these clever bots have flown under the radar since 2013 by acting differently from obviously automated accounts. Research suggests they tweet only a few times per day, don't include URLs, never mention or reply to other users, and only follow a few "friends."
"The Star Wars botnet provides a valuable source of ground truth data for research on Twitter bots," according to graduate student Juan Echeverria, the computer scientist at University College of London who made the discovery.
Echeverria and Shi Zhou, UCL senior lecturer in charge of the research, set out with the intention of better understanding how people use Twitter. But their observations led them to the dark side of social media.
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"We were really [lucky] to discover the Star Wars bots by accident," the research paper said. (Though Obi-Wan Kenobi might disagree.)
"Inspired by the properties of the Star Wars bots," it continued, "we have recently discovered another botnet with more than [500,000] bots." More details will be reported soon.
In the meantime, the public can help by reporting bots via the "That is a bot!" website and Twitter account.