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Can you believe everything you read online?

Government & Economics

Can you believe everything you read Online?

This paragraph discusses how there are “bots” spreading false information about the COVID-19 pandemic throught twitter. According to the article “npr” it states that Close to half of the accounts tweeting about Coronavirus are possibly bots. Researchers have resulted in more than 200 million tweets about the virus since January and found that accounts that act more like computerized machines than humans have sent about 45 per cent. This implies that researchers say that it is too early to come to a conclusion on who is behind these bots accounts. Kathleen Carley, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University says “We do know that it looks like it's a propaganda machine, and it definitely matches the Russian and Chinese playbooks, but it would take a tremendous amount of resources to substantiate that”. Researchers have identified over 100 false COVID-19 narratives that are being spread widely on Twitter by bot-controlled accounts. Furthermore, Among the false information spread bot accounts tweeted conspiracy theories about hospitals filled with mannequins or tweets that linked coronavirus spreading to 5 G wireless towers, a notion that is patently untrue. This means that these bots spread false information as mentioned previously, claiming there are hospitals full of mannequins. Researchers state that they investigate the followers of a Twitter account, the tweeting frequency and how often the user is listed on the website when deciding if the tweeter is a bot account. Nonetheless, Twitter says it's removed thousands of tweets that contain false or possibly damaging coronavirus information. More over Twitter has created new labels that will accompany incorrect, contested or unverified coronavirus tweets, an initiative that aims to stop the rapid spread of tweets that contain negative and inaccurate information about the global health crisis. I don't think anyone should trust anything they read online, for several reasons. Many people who don't really get into social media or don't understand a lot of it can easily believe what they see. Others are also interested in purchasing unnecessary items which might be incorrect. For example , people like to create false information about anything that makes people believe that Celebrities have died, which is totally wrong.

Bronx, New York

6/1/20

Marileni Mauricio

https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/05/20/859814085/researchers-nearly-half-of-accounts-tweeting-about-coronavirus-are-likely-bots

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