Like most social media platforms these days, a large number of accounts on Twitter are automated, or, in other words, are run by bots. This doesn’t just apply to those comments promising you crypto-wealth if you follow ten simple steps either, there are some more helpful bots out there. Like, those that function as natural disaster warning systems. Or Inspirobot.
That said, distinguishing bots from living, breathing, flesh-clad human beings can get a little confusing sometimes, so Twitter is rolling out some handy labels to help you spot the difference.
Twitter tells you if these are the droids you’re looking for
“Starting today,” announced the microblogging platform yesterday. “we’re testing these labels to give you more context about who you’re interacting with on Twitter.”
It’s a fairly simple fix, all things considered. Twitter will slap labels onto bot accounts pointing out 1) that it’s a bot account and 2) who it’s automated by.
For now, it appears that the labels are only being applied to a few accounts for a testing phase, but will reportedly be rolled out to the masses sometime later this year.
Twitter’s been coming out with new features and improvements left and right lately. Back in July, it started testing a much-needed dislike/downvote button, and also added closed captions for voice tweets for accessibility purposes. Earlier this month it rolled out a new and extensive anti-harassment feature, Safety Mode, which analyses any Tweets, comments, replies and DMs related to your account and autoblocks accounts showing any red flags for you. And just the other day, the platform added a “Remove Follower” button so that you can boot unwanted followers without going through the arduous process of ‘soft blocking them.