Digital Forensic Research Lab

August 30, 2017

Twitter Bots Use Likes, RTs for Intimidation

This post was originally published on this siteI awoke this morning to find my account on Twitter (@briankrebs) had attracted almost 12,000 new followers overnight. Then I noticed I’d gained almost as many followers as the number of re-tweets (RTs) earned for a tweet I published on Tuesday. The tweet stated how every time I tweet something related to Russian President Vladimir Putin I get a predictable stream of replies that are in support of President Trump — even in cases when neither Trump nor the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign were even mentioned. This tweet about Putin generated more than 12,000 retweets and […]