Hat tip to @1petermartin for pointing to this blog post The Desperation of a Liberal MP? on Storify.
It seems Federal Liberal Party MP and Shadow Minister for Climate Action, Environment and Heritage, Greg Hunt, may be using automated retweets via the UK masquerading as the efforts of genuine tweeters.
Now that seems very similar to the political astroturfing under taken by U.S. right wingers and, a tactic thought to be much admired and emulated by fellow Liberal Corey Bernardi and his Conservative Leadership Foundation.
When contacted by The Sydney Morning Herald Mr. Hunt's office denied all knowledge of the spambots.
However, the article revealed other suspect Twitter accounts:
When contacted by The Sydney Morning Herald Mr. Hunt's office denied all knowledge of the spambots.
However, the article revealed other suspect Twitter accounts:
Tiphereth
Gloria, social media expert with VML Australia, said the bot evidence presented
in the Storify post appeared to be accurate and she believes it pointed to a
Liberal Party campaign. The fake accounts appeared to be part of a “propaganda
war” effort to “increase share of voice of anti-Labor sentiment”.
Separately,
other spam bot accounts are more blatant. One suspected anti-Labor bot Twitter
profile with over 88,000 tweets is @LaborDirt,
which pumps out a constant stream of anti-Labor content. Anti-Gillard account @GI-Gillard has reportedly been
retweeted by the same bots that retweeted Mr Hunt's tweet.
Sophisticated
spammers use scripts to create hundreds or thousands of fake Twitter accounts
that at first glance appear to be legitimate but are designed to promote a
product or political view.
“Spammers
and bots always have randomly generated user names. It's the first sign
something is dodgy,” Ms Gloria said.
“Then
looking at the profiles - the length of time they've been on twitter and the
lack of other meaningful tweets and interactions is the clincher.”
One hopes that The Geek bends his forensic gaze towards other tweeting MPs, because it’s doubtful that Mr.Hunt's account was the only one with under the radar spambots attached.
The tweetbots will change the political twitterverse. Tags such as #auspol will become wastelands of trolls. Genuine pol watchers will have to be more creative with hashtags and keep a step ahead of them. Where we go, they will follow.
ReplyDeleteStay dry or at least stay safe u there!
Tweet of the day:
@NickEvershed: Australia: if it's not on fire, it's probably underwater.