Report: Twitter Bots are Spreading Massive Amounts of COVID-19 Misinformation

From IEEE Spectrum:

Back in February, the World Health Organization called the flood of misinformation about the coronavirus flowing through the Internet a “massive infodemic.” Since then, the situation has not improved. While social media platforms have promised to detect and label posts that contain misleading information related to COVID-19, they haven’t stopped the surge.

But who is responsible for all those misleading posts? To help answer the question, researchers at Indiana University’s Observatory on Social Media used a tool of their own creation called BotometerLite that detects bots on Twitter. They first compiled a list of what they call “low-credibility domains” that have been spreading misinformation about COVID-19, then used their tool to determine how many bots were sharing links to this misinformation.

Their findings, which they presented at this year’s meeting of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, revealed that bots overwhelmingly spread misinformation about COVID-19 as opposed to accurate content. They also found that some of the bots were acting in “a coordinated fashion” to amplify misleading messages.

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