There are a number of useful automated accounts (or bots as they are more widely known) but determining what is a bot and what is a human isn’t always easy.
Twitter wants to make it easier for everybody to determine what accounts are bots using labels.
As of Thursday users will begin seeing labels on certain accounts that show if an account is automated or not.
What's a bot and what's not? We're making it easier to identify #GoodBots and their automated Tweets with new labels.
Starting today, we’re testing these labels to give you more context about who you're interacting with on Twitter. pic.twitter.com/gnN5jVU3pp
— Support (@Support) September 9, 2021
“Examples of automated accounts you might see on Twitter include bots that help you find vaccine appointments and disaster early warning systems. When these accounts let you know they’re automated, you get a better understanding of their purpose when you’re interacting with them,” Twitter explained in an FAQ.
For now the labels will be automatically applied to an account when it joins the test group. Whether this will be an opt-in process or automatic in future is unclear at this stage.
While this is a good feature to be introduced to Twitter, we worry that if this features remains as opt-in, disinformation bots and other nefarious accounts will skate by under the radar.
Of course, that’s why Twitter tests these features before rolling them out and the label feature we eventually get could be very different.