Catch a Bot

Study reveals behavioral differences between bots and humans that could inform new machine learning algorithms

Apr 2020, phys.org

https://techxplore.com/news/2020-04-reveals-behavioral-differences-bots-humans.html

AKA I'm not a bot but I play one on the internet

The researchers found, among humans, trends that were not present among bots: Humans showed an increase in the amount of social interaction over the course of a session, illustrated by an increase in the fraction of retweets, replies and number of mentions contained in a tweet.

Humans also showed a decrease in the amount of content produced, illustrated by a decreasing trend in average tweet length.

These trends are thought to be due to the fact that as sessions progress, human users grow tired and are less likely to undertake complex activities, such as composing original content. Another possible explanation may be given by the fact that as time goes by, users are exposed to more posts, therefore increasing their probability to react and interact with content. In both cases, bots were shown to not be affected by such considerations and no behavioral change was observed from them.

image credit: Long Exposure Photo of Budapest Tram Lit Up with 30,000 LED Lights by Birimyi Krisztian