Bots behind rise in Rahul Gandhi’s Twitter popularity? Sees Smirti Irani
NEW DELHI : Information and Broadcasting Minister Smriti Irani on Saturday took a jibe at Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi over the rise in the number of people retweeting his messages and sought to link this with twitter accounts in Russia, Indonesia and Kazakhstan. Congress however rejected the allegation as “factually wrong”.
Ms Irani attached with her tweet a news report, “Bots behind rise in Rahul Gandhi’s twitter popularity?”, which said that a glance at the twitter handles retweeting Gandhi’s tweets does throw up some questions A Twitterbot is a type of bot software that controls a Twitter account via the Twitter API (Application Programming Interface). The bot software may autonomously perform actions such as tweeting, retweeting, liking, following, unfollowing, or direct messaging other accounts.
Her junior in the ministry, Rajyavardhan Rathore, compared the act to doping in sports.”In sports, this would come under ‘Doping’… hey wait!?? Does ‘dope’ remind you of someone,” he said in a tweet. Divya Spandana, who heads the Social Media and Digital Communications wing of the Congress, hit back at Ms Irani and termed the news story as “factually wrong”.”Why do we need them when we have you?” she said in response to Ms Irani’s tweet. Rajeev Chandrasekhar, a Rajya Sabha MP who is part of NDA, also took potshots at Mr Gandhi.
“Desperate times call for desperate measures,” he tweeted. Amit Malviya, in-charge of BJP’s national Information & Technology, targeted Mr Gandhi in a series of tweets. “Rahul Gandhi should have known that popularity can’t be bought, certainly not from Russia, Kazakhstan. Congress’ social media dream aborted?”
“Insincere politician that Rahul Gandhi is, he wanted to hoodwink people that he is getting popular by deploying bots!” “In their desperation to crown Rahul Gandhi, Congress bought him some love from Russia too!” Rahul Gandhi’s Twitter handle ‘OfficeofRG’ has been the topic of various news outlets recently, citing a rise in retweets as evidence of a resurgence of Rahul Gandhi’s interaction on social media. However, a cursory glance at the Twitter handles retweeting the Congress Vice President’s tweets does throw up some questions…are these automated ‘bots’ mass retweeting Rahul Gandhi’s tweets?
On October 15th, ‘OfficeofRG’ retweeted US President Donald Trump’s tweet praising American-Pakistani relations with a caption ‘Modi ji quick, looks like President Trump A close analysis of this tweet showed that these alleged ‘bots’ with a Russian, Kazakh or Indonesian characteristic were routinely RT-ing the Congress VP’s tweets. Further scrutiny of these Twitter accounts showed that the follower list was usually under 10 users and retweets comprised of random topics from across the world and those of Rahul Gandhi.
Moreover, the content of these twitter timelines comprised merely of retweets and a lack of tweets which could be categorised as an original though .. Rahul Gandhi’s ‘resurgence’ on social media also goes hand in hand with another news report claiming that the Congress had roped in Big Data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica for a more targeted digital campaign to woo voters. Cambridge Analytica was in the news during the US Presidential election cycle last year for advising Donald Trump in precision voter targeting based on online habits of voters in different states.
When asked about this apparent inorganic spike Divya Spandana/ Ramya, the new Congress chief of Social Media and Digital communications wrote back, “On Twitter one tweets and what happens after that is not in our control. You will have to speak to Twitter to get clarity.”
Fake Twitter followers and ‘bots’ going on Retweet frenzies is not a new phenomenon. An exhaustive report in the New York Times in 2013, mentions the burgeoning business of fake Twitter profiles and ‘bulk sales of retweets’. The newspaper quoted a reseller of retweets as saying, “Business is great…had hired a couple of freelance programers, a kid could bypass Twitter’s defences.” (With Agency Inputs ).
