Trump address Twitter numbers appear to be boosted by 'bots'

[highplainsdem]

Source: Politico

President Donald Trump’s first congressional address — widely celebrated as the most-tweeted presidential address to Congress ever — appears to have been boosted by pro-Trump “bot” accounts.

Even before they started trending yesterday, the official hashtags — #JointAddress and #JointSession — accumulated decidedly inorganic traffic, including from some accounts that had never tweeted about any other topic. Telltale signs of automated traffic include lack of a profile picture and prolific output.

Many conservative groups and figures saw their approval of Trump’s speech amplified by automated retweets.

For instance, one conservative non-profit, Secure America Now, flooded the #JointAddress hashtag with a hawkish pseudo-poll about such foreign policy issues as the Muslim Brotherhood and relations with Iran. The poll spread with help from automated accounts, some of which continued to disseminate the poll hours after Trump stepped away from the teleprompters.

-snip-

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/trump-speech-twitter-235590

[mahatmakanejeeves]

1. Macedonians have to put food on the table too.

"Things aren't always as they seem; skim milk masquerades as cream."

[Beartracks]

2. Unfortunately, Truth isn't necessarily what creates Perception.

And in the court of public opinion -- and social media -- Perception rules. If they "rigged" Twitter to get a higher tweet count and start "trending," then they get to make the claim about "most-tweeted presidential address ever" because that's all the typical American is going to hear about the matter.

=====================

[Cattledog]

3. Very true!

[Odoreida]

4. In general Twitter stats are not to be relied on.

Not even uncontroversial ones.

[More_Cowbell]

5. I think about how empty a person has to be to care about Twitter numbers

...especially, to care enough to FALSIFY them.

[Sparky 1]

6. Is there *any* way in which Republicans will not cheat?