Most Links to Popular Sites on Twitter Come From Bots

Published: April 10, 2018, 7:59 a.m.

Bots have become a great scourge of the internet. Recently, they've flooded government comment systems with fake activism, distorted the national discourse on guns, and launched malicious attacks against the Justice Department. And a new study suggests they're behind the majority of links shared on Twitter, too. A Pew Research report released Monday finds that a whole two-thirds of links to popular sites shared on Twitter come from automated accounts.