Not everything posted on Twitter is written by a human, and Twitter has decided it’s probably a good idea to label automated tweets generated by bots.
As Engadget reports, Twitter is running a test that will allow developer accounts to use new labels making it clear when a tweet is automated by a bot. The labels uses a robot head icon and say “Automated by ,” or simply “Automated.”
Twitter confirmed the test in a tweet, stating, “We’re making it easier to identify #GoodBots and their automated Tweets with new labels.” Initially around 500 developer accounts will gain access to the labels, but all developer accounts will be able to use them before the end of 2021. For now, they are labels developers can decide to use, and they aren’t available to non-developer accounts. That means there’s no obligation to label automated bot tweets, and no option to for non-developers (yet?).
Eventually we could see this become a standard feature of the platform, which would highlight any automated tweet by default. This would have a big impact on the effectiveness of malicious bot accounts, which can currently fly under the radar and spread misinformation. Twitter is apparently working on misinformation labels, so why not combine them with a bot label? A tweet marked as potentially containing misinformation and labeled as a bot would be much harder to take seriously by anyone reading it.
