Business Standard

How fake accounts drive the world of Twitter

The battle of the bots will continue

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Devangshu Datta
On October 15, at 1.56 pm, the official Twitter account of Rahul Gandhi reacted to a tweet by US President Donald Trump praising American-Pakistani relations with this tweet: “Modiji quick, looks like President Trump needs another hug.” The tweet quickly zoomed to 30,000-plus retweets.

On October 21, news agency ANI carried a report claiming that Gandhi was using fake twitter accounts — so-called twitter bots from Kazakhstan, Russia and other nations — to retweet his tweets and thereby amplify the apparent popularity of his account.

The story showed screenshots of several automated Twitter accounts that retweeted that Trump tweet. This

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