Bot or Not

Bot or Not is a new class project – designed to tell whether that Twitter feed is a person or a bot. I usually don’t care. If BBC uses a bot to send their headlines my way, it’s not a big deal. I want the headlines, and I’ll decide whether to click.

Real people may be more interesting than bots, but not always.

I checked @tcdailyplanet and the verdict was “probably a human, but with bot tendencies.” Hmmm. I know it’s a human. Humans, actually.

Next, @maryturck. Same verdict. Wait, I’m only probably a human?

I checked a couple of accounts that I follow. Some got “We think it is a human, but you just never know these days.” Hmm. I’m not sure if that’s better or worse than “probably a human.”

What all of the accounts had in common, according to Bot or Not, were two things:

This account does not use dot at replies, which only humans do.

Well, yeah. I never heard of a “dot at reply” until I saw Bot or Not. I’m still not sure I know how to do it, or why.

This account posts a suspiciously high number of links.

Because I’m a news junkie? (And, of course, because @tcdailyplanet is a news operation?)

Oh, well. Maybe I can figure out some other way to be more human.