Here’s how bots blow up a hashtag on X
On Friday, #Famine_in_Gaza was trending on the social media platform X. Campaign Against Antisemitism investigated the trend and found that it was started and manipulated by bots.
Here’s how it works:
First, hundreds of accounts start posting phrases concocted by AI, but all using the #Famine_in_Gaza hashtag.
All of the bot accounts post with the hashtag and a phrase that a typical X user might post. There is no engagement with the post because these particular bots have no friends.
The bots then use a random string of characters at the end of the post, for example, “tYuJL”. This is to make X’s anti-bot algorithm think that it’s definitely a unique post.
The bots look at each other’s posts to fool the X algorithm into thinking that they’re interesting. As a result, bot accounts with a small number of followers have a disproportionately high number of views on their posts.
In terms of ownership, some bots are operated by state actors to pursue an agenda, but today’s bots are just bots for sale, which post about anything. One of the bots identified by Campaign Against Antisemitism posts in all languages about everything from scams to politics and likes to “lick hallucinogenic frogs”, according to its profile.
Someone, somewhere, decided to direct a bot farm to promote the hashtag #Famine_in_Gaza and an army of bots swung into action. The bots are mostly registered around 2011 and 2012 and have been posting in coordination for a very long time.
After a while, the hashtag reaches number one and real users weigh in. One user’s post with the hashtag read: “Israel, worse than Nazi Germany.” According to the International Definition of Antisemitism, “Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis” is an example of antisemitism.
A spokesperson for Campaign Against Antisemitism said: “This phenomenon is all too common. When Elon Musk took over X, he said that he would end bot farming on the platform, but that clearly hasn’t happened. This isn’t just a case of a few hackers having fun on social media. It is the deliberate manipulation of public discourse, with real-world consequences for Jews across the globe, who have faced an unimaginable surge in antisemitism over the past two years — a crisis only worsened by foul play online. This is the new face of media manipulation, and it’s deadly serious.”
Campaign Against Antisemitism continues its robust engagement with social media companies over the content that they enable to be published, and we continue to make representations to the Government in this connection.
