Twitter trialling "bot" account identification
I run lots of automated Twitter accounts - "bots" in common parlance. But there's no way for people to know that these are automated accounts.
This leads to slightly odd situations where people try to have conversations with them.
It sure looks like a shade of purple to me. 🤔
— 🇺🇸 Elections Matter 🇺🇸 (@waaaaahat) August 24, 2021
In a recent blog post - Rethinking Twitter Verification - I mused that it would be great if Twitter let you mark specific accounts as robots.
if I were in charge (which I'm not) there would be various types of ticks.
🤖 is a bot
🆔 proved their legal identity
🏭 is run by a brand
⚖ is run by a government department
👮 Official law enforcement
😎 Celebrity
And so on.— Terence Eden (@edent) June 13, 2020
Well! That day is finally here! Some of my bots are now officially marked as such!
This is, as I understand it, a beta test. We'll see how users and developers react to this.
What Is It Like to Be a Bat Bot?
Automated accounts - where a human user isn't manually generating all the replies - are incredibly popular. People follow their local train line to find out about delays, or follow bots which Tweet the weather, or who won the sportball. Do those bots only give automated information? Do people expect to be able to have a conversation with them? Do they dream of electronic sheep?
Follow my bots
Here are my bots which have been given the Twitter bot logo:
Flood Forecast
A bot which lets you know the flood risk for the coming days (England and Wales only)
Significant inland flooding impacts are possible but not expected on Wednesday and Thursday. The overall flood risk for the next five days is LOW.https://t.co/8BDNluUtSi pic.twitter.com/ZMdGg4q71m
— UK Flood Forecast (@FloodForecast) September 8, 2021
My Solar Panels
At sunset every day, you'll get a graph of how much electricity our roof has generated
Today I generated 15.07kWh of solar electricity. pic.twitter.com/usamopXqB1
— Edent's Solar Panels (@Edent_Solar) September 6, 2021
UK Earthquakes
Very occasionally, we get small earthquakes in the UK. This lets you know when they happen
Whoa! Did you feel that #quake? UK Earthquake alert : M 2.1 :MELVICH,HIGHLAND, Fri, 02 Jul 2021 13:14:05 https://t.co/iR1ecoDjwV
— UK Earthquakes (@UK_Quakes) July 2, 2021
RGB Colours
A very silly bot which gives you a random colour to brighten your day
"Red (Munsell)"#f2003c pic.twitter.com/KkLHrBeppI
— Colours by @edent (@RGB_Colours) September 9, 2021
Open Benches
Our crowd-sourced psychogeography project Tweets every time a photo of a memorial bench is uploaded.
IN MEMORY OF THE LATE
COUNCILIOR H. J. B. (BEN) WATKINS OBE
PRESENTED BY THE LABOUR MOVEMENT THROUGHOUT WALES IN RECOGNITION OF
HIS OUTSTANDING PUBLIC SERVICEhttps://t.co/Qh1yuLLEu1
CC BY-SA 4.0
℅ @StroudieDr pic.twitter.com/PlrbiuUSWt— OpenBenches.org (@openbenches) September 9, 2021
Thanks
Huge thanks to the @TwitterDev team for giving me early access to this scheme. You can read more about the trial.
David Simpson says:
I generally put a 🤖 in the name of my bots, examples in this list:
twitter.com/i/lists/122257…
Andy Mabbett says:
I sometimes tweet "@" your OpenBenches account [1]. I know it's a bot, but I also know that you see such messages, as do others who follow both that account and mine.
[1] Example, just now: https://twitter.com/pigsonthewing/status/1436656023033376772
Prateek Buch says:
Excellent idea, I'm sure you (or possibly a bit account set up for the purpose?!) will keep us posted on the trial!
James Taylor 🏳️🌈 says:
I have a political 🤖 where this would be extremely helpful- I wonder if @TwitterDev already have enough people in their beta yet
Terence Eden says:
The trial has been a success! If you have an account which sends automated tweets, you can now apply for #GoodBots.
Russ Garrett says:
Finally! Although for some reason linking the managing account always fails on the first try for me - works the second time.