Twitter bomb

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The term Twitter bomb or tweet bomb (also spelled as one word) refers to posting numerous (pejoratively, "spamming") posts with the same hashtags and other similar content, including @messages, from multiple accounts, with the goal of advertising a certain meme, usually by filling people's post feeds with the same message, and making it a "trending topic" on Twitter. [1] [2] [3] This may be done by individual users, fake accounts, or both. [4]

Contents

Advertising

Twitter bombing may be used for commercial advertising. An early example from April 2005 referred to advertising a YouTube video series Ask a Ninja. [2]

Politics

Twitter bombing is one of the tools used in Internet activism, both by mainstream politicians like Barack Obama and by groups like Anonymous. [1] [5] [6]

The earliest recorded usage of the Twitter bomb is from August 2008, when it was used by bloggers Liza Sabater and Kenneth Quinnell in response to Republican use of the #dontgo hashtag relating to offshore oil drilling. [7] The term was used for other purposes in 2008, but the other meanings have since disappeared. [2]

An example of a Twitter bomb was the campaign organized by online activists in response to a July 31, 2009 Washington Post article on Hillary Clinton that was deemed sexist. [8]

In 2011, it was used extensively by Barack Obama's campaign staff to encourage his followers to contact Congress and encourage them to reach a compromise during the United States debt-ceiling crisis of 2011. Shortly thereafter, @BarackObama lost about 37,000 followers. [4]

Positive impacts

Twitter bombing/spamming can provide exposure to current events that are not being exposed enough from mainstream media. Dhiraj Murthy writes:

Twitter has received significant media attention in its use to disseminate information during disasters, including the 2008 Mumbai bomb blasts (Dolnick, 2005) and the January 2005 crash of US Airways flight 1549 (Beaumont, 2009). [9]

Linking this with the use of hashtag, see hashtag activism, news and information can be spread around the internet at a rapid pace with the use of hashtags.

Comparison to online spam

The use of the Twitter bomb tactics has been known to misfire, as people might be offended by spamming, or trolling. [2] [10]

Spammers have several goals, which are phishing, advertising, or malware distribution. Unlike traditional online spamming, such as email, X has a limit of only 280 characters per post. Therefore, a Twitter bomb often include URLs in their posts in order to send others users to their malicious pages online. [11]

Unlike email spam, Twitter bombs may require participation from their targeted users. Fake accounts are a common source of Twitter bombs. In order to avoid X's spam filters and to overcome their lack of followers, Twitter bombs are often sent as a reply to existing posts about the same topic. This is done in hopes that the authors of the existing posts will repost the response to their own followers, spreading the Twitter bomb before the fake account is deleted. [12]

With regards to numbers, an example of a Twitter bomb analyzed in one research paper described how nine fake user accounts produced 929 posts in 138 minutes, all with a URL to a political website, presenting negative views on the U.S. politician Martha Coakley. [12] The message might have reached about 60,000 before being eliminated by X as spam. [13]

Criticism

Many X users find comfort in sharing their ideas and thoughts to the general public. Though X can be utilized to spread awareness of a variety of issues and causes, many can take advantage and post numerous posts that may be viewed as spam. X's rule page considers posts "spam" once a user displays multiple posts with unrelated hashtags to a certain topic, or continues to post multiple posts of the same content in one account. Some instances, these posts can be viewed as trolling once they begin to seek out other X users for arguments about controversial issues.

See also

Related Research Articles

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Spamming is the use of messaging systems to send multiple unsolicited messages (spam) to large numbers of recipients for the purpose of commercial advertising, non-commercial proselytizing, or any prohibited purpose, or simply repeatedly sending the same message to the same user. While the most widely recognized form of spam is email spam, the term is applied to similar abuses in other media: instant messaging spam, Usenet newsgroup spam, Web search engine spam, spam in blogs, wiki spam, online classified ads spam, mobile phone messaging spam, Internet forum spam, junk fax transmissions, social spam, spam mobile apps, television advertising and file sharing spam. It is named after Spam, a luncheon meat, by way of a Monty Python sketch about a restaurant that has Spam in almost every dish in which Vikings annoyingly sing "Spam" repeatedly.

Internet activism involves the use of electronic-communication technologies such as social media, e-mail, and podcasts for various forms of activism to enable faster and more effective communication by citizen movements, the delivery of particular information to large and specific audiences, as well as coordination. Internet technologies are used by activists for cause-related fundraising, community building, lobbying, and organizing. A digital-activism campaign is "an organized public effort, making collective claims on a target authority, in which civic initiators or supporters use digital media." Research has started to address specifically how activist/advocacy groups in the U.S. and in Canada use social media to achieve digital-activism objectives.

<span style="font-size:115%">T</span>witter American social networking service

Twitter, officially known as X since July 2023, is a social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, images, and videos in short posts commonly known as "tweets" and like other users' content. The platform also includes direct messaging, video and audio calling, bookmarks, lists, communities, a chatbot (Grok), job search, and Spaces, a social audio feature. Users can vote on context added by approved users using the Community Notes feature.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hashtag</span> Metadata tag prefixed with #

A hashtag is a metadata tag operator that is prefaced by the hash symbol, #. On social media, hashtags are used on microblogging and photo-sharing services such as X or Tumblr as a form of user-generated tagging that enables cross-referencing of content by topic or theme. For example, a search within Instagram for the hashtag #bluesky returns all posts that have been tagged with that term. After the initial hash symbol, a hashtag may include letters, numerals or other punctuation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Social media marketing</span> Promotion of products or services on social media

Social media marketing is the use of social media platforms and websites to promote a product or service. Although the terms e-marketing and digital marketing are still dominant in academia, social media marketing is becoming more popular for both practitioners and researchers.

Since the launch of Twitter on July 15, 2006, there have been many notable uses for the service in a variety of environments, including political, economic, social and cultural uses. As users tweet their messages on Twitter, they encourage other people to respond and engage in online discussions as well as offline activities. User engagement on Twitter is usually measured with likes, replies and retweets and is a form of social power. After the 2022 acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk, the platform rebranded to the name X; however, it is still widely referred to as Twitter.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Weibo</span> Chinese microblogging website

Weibo, previously Sina Weibo, is a Chinese microblogging (weibo) website. Launched by Sina Corporation on 14 August 2009, it is one of the biggest social media platforms in China, with over 582 million monthly active users as of Q1 2022. The platform has been a huge financial success, with surging stocks, lucrative advertising sales and high revenue and total earnings per quarter. At the start of 2018, it surpassed the US$30 billion market valuation mark for the first time.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Instagram</span> Social media platform owned by Meta Platforms

Instagram is an American photo and video sharing social networking service owned by Meta Platforms. It allows users to upload media that can be edited with filters, be organized by hashtags, and be associated with a location via geographical tagging. Posts can be shared publicly or with preapproved followers. Users can browse other users' content by tags and locations, view trending content, like photos, and follow other users to add their content to a personal feed. A Meta-operated image-centric social media platform, it is available on iOS, Android, Windows 10, and the web. Users can take photos and edit them using built-in filters and other tools, then share them on other social media platforms like Facebook. It supports 32 languages including English, Hindi, Spanish, French, Korean, and Japanese.

Shadow banning, also called stealth banning, hell banning, ghost banning, and comment ghosting, is the practice of blocking or partially blocking a user or the user's content from some areas of an online community in such a way that the ban is not readily apparent to the user, regardless of whether the action is taken by an individual or an algorithm. For example, shadow-banned comments posted to a blog or media website would be visible to the sender, but not to other users accessing the site.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Social media and television</span> Emerging platforms

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Social spam is unwanted spam content appearing on social networking services, social bookmarking sites, and any website with user-generated content. It can be manifested in many ways, including bulk messages, profanity, insults, hate speech, malicious links, fraudulent reviews, fake friends, and personally identifiable information.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Social media use by Barack Obama</span>

Barack Obama won the 2008 United States presidential election on November 4, 2008. During his campaign, he became the first presidential candidate of a major party to utilize social networking sites to expand and engage his audience of supporters and donors.

A Twitter bot is a type of software bot that controls a Twitter account via the Twitter API. The social bot software may autonomously perform actions such as tweeting, retweeting, liking, following, unfollowing, or direct messaging other accounts. The automation of Twitter accounts is governed by a set of automation rules that outline proper and improper uses of automation. Proper usage includes broadcasting helpful information, automatically generating interesting or creative content, and automatically replying to users via direct message. Improper usage includes circumventing API rate limits, violating user privacy, spamming, and sockpuppeting. Twitter bots may be part of a larger botnet. They can be used to influence elections and in misinformation campaigns.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Use of Twitter by public figures</span>

Twitter usage by public figures includes the posting and content-sharing by celebrity and politician users on Twitter.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Syrian Electronic Army</span> Hacker group affiliated with the Syrian government

The Syrian Electronic Army was a group of computer hackers which first surfaced online in 2011 to support the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Using spamming, website defacement, malware, phishing, and denial-of-service attacks, it has targeted terrorist organizations, political opposition groups, western news outlets, human rights groups and websites that are seemingly neutral to the Syrian conflict. It has also hacked government websites in the Middle East and Europe, as well as US defense contractors. As of 2011, the SEA has been "the first Arab country to have a public Internet Army hosted on its national networks to openly launch cyber attacks on its enemies".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hashtag activism</span> Use of hashtags for internet activism

Hashtag activism refers to the use of social media hashtags for Internet activism. The hashtag has become one of the many ways that social media contributes to civic engagement and social movements. The use of the hashtag on social media provides users with an opportunity to share information and opinions about social issues in a way that others (followers) can interact and engage as part of a larger conversation with the potential to create change. The hashtag itself consists of a word or phrase that is connected to a social or political issue, and fosters a place where discourse can occur. Social media provides an important platform for historically marginalized populations. Through the use of hashtags these groups are able to communicate, mobilize, and advocate for issues less visible to the mainstream.

Social media and political communication in the United States refers to how political institutions, politicians, private entities, and the general public use social media platforms to communicate and interact in the United States.

A social bot, also described as a social AI or social algorithm, is a software agent that communicates autonomously on social media. The messages it distributes can be simple and operate in groups and various configurations with partial human control (hybrid) via algorithm. Social bots can also use artificial intelligence and machine learning to express messages in more natural human dialogue.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2020 Twitter account hijacking</span> July 2020 compromise of multiple Twitter accounts to post scam tweets

On July 15, 2020, between 20:00 and 22:00 UTC, 130 high-profile Twitter accounts were reportedly compromised by outside parties to promote a bitcoin scam. Twitter and other media sources confirmed that the perpetrators had gained access to Twitter's administrative tools so that they could alter the accounts themselves and post the tweets directly. They appeared to have used social engineering to gain access to the tools via Twitter employees. Three individuals were arrested by authorities on July 31, 2020, and charged with wire fraud, money laundering, identity theft, and unauthorized computer access related to the scam.

References

  1. 1 2 Mary C. Joyce (30 April 2010). Digital Activism Decoded: The New Mechanics of Change. IDEA. p. 221. ISBN   978-1-932716-60-3 . Retrieved 30 April 2012.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Ethan Zuckerman, "The Tweetbomb and the Ethics of Attention", April 20, 2012, Last accessed on April 30, 2012.
  3. ↑ J. Ratkiewicz, M. D. Conover, M. Meiss, B. Gonçalves, A. Flammini, F. Menczer, "Detecting and Tracking Political Abuse in Social Media", Proc. 5th International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media ICWSM (2011).
  4. 1 2 "37K Followers Ditch Obama After Twitter Bomb - @BarackObama tweets handles of GOP legislators, state by state". Newser. 30 July 2011. Retrieved 2012-04-30.
  5. ↑ John Clifford Green; Daniel J. Coffey (1 September 2010). The State of the Parties: The Changing Role of Contemporary American Parties. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 178. ISBN   978-0-7425-9954-3 . Retrieved 30 April 2012.
  6. ↑ Chris Richardson (2012-04-20). "Anonymous Plans "24 Hour Tweet Bomb" To Fight CISPA". WebProNews. Retrieved 2012-04-30.
  7. ↑ Kenneth Quinnell, "Twitter Bomb", Florida Speaks blog, August 5, 2008, Last accessed on August 27, 2012.
  8. ↑ Mary C. Joyce (30 April 2010). Digital Activism Decoded: The New Mechanics of Change. IDEA. pp. 155–156. ISBN   978-1-932716-60-3 . Retrieved 30 April 2012.
  9. ↑ Murthy, Dhiraj. "Twitter: Microphone for the masses?." Media, Culture & Society 33.5 (2011): 779.
  10. ↑ "Social Media Activism and the (In)justice of the Mob". Partisans. 2012-04-26. Archived from the original on 2012-05-06. Retrieved 2012-04-30.
  11. ↑ Song, Jonghyuk, Sangho Lee, and Jong Kim."Spam filtering in twitter using sender-receiver relationship." Recent Advances in Intrusion Detection. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2011.
  12. 1 2 P. Metaxas, E. Mustafaraj, "From Obscurity to Prominence in Minutes: Political Speech and Real-Time Search", In: Proceedings of the WebSci10: Extending the Frontiers of Society On-Line, April 26-27th, 2010, Raleigh, NC: US (2010).
  13. ↑ Neil Savage. 2011. "Twitter as Medium and Message", Communications of the ACM 54, no. 3 (March 2011), 18–20. DOI:10.1145/1897852.1897860
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