Sarah Nyberg's Twitter Bot Feeds The Emptiness of Alt-Right Trolls

10/16/2016
SarahNyberg'sTwitterbotfeedstheemptinessofaltrighttrolls
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Reuters/Denis Balibouse
Engaging with "alt-right" Pepe-spewing racists on Twitter is a diversion I have yet to tire of,
but the fact is even I can't tweet enough satisfy the masses. Fortunately, automating the
process is a viable option, as shown by writer Sarah Nyberg's @Arguetron Twitter bot.
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It's not the rst such scripted process to hit social media (according to Nyberg, her inspiration
came from a number of similar bots created by Nora Reed including @opinions_good and
@good_opinions.), but it does have a remarkably deep capability to create benign but baiting
responses. One egg avatar'd tweeter determined to defend the honor of a not-as-popular-ashis-follower-count-suggests alt-righter went back and forth with Arguetron for about ten
hours without catching on.
SarahNyberg
@srhbutts
6Oct
thisismyfavoriteinteraction
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someonerepeatedlyattemptstosexuallyharassthebotthinking
it'shuman,thisishowitreplies:pic.twitter.com/2xqXVRTJPZ
SarahNyberg
@srhbutts
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thisinfowarseggistherecordholder
itarguedwiththebotfor...almostTENHOURS.yes,really.
pic.twitter.com/DiQdNd8azw
3:26PM6Oct2016
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2,054
3,978
It's not exactly a coincidence that Nyberg has been able to create a language so familiar and
responsive to these elements, as she was a member of the same online communities that
birthed so many of them. Like many of us with a background in 90s/00s chatrooms and
forums, the nature internet arguments comes easy, however, some of us grew up to temper
that with some amount of respect for humanity in general. Some have not, and in a turn,
Nyberg has been targeted by Gamergate-related harassment over the last couple of years.
Tweetsby@arguetron
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Liz@arguetron
economicexploitationiscentralto,andinseperablefrom,
capitalism
37s
Liz@arguetron
seriously,WillShetterlyishorrible
10m
Liz@arguetron
nothingusefulhasevercomeoutof/b/
Embed
ViewonTwitter
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Still, Arguetron is by design not abusive or malicious in its tweets, and does not actively seek
out adversaries. That's in contrast to some bots, like Nigel Leck's 2010 project @AI_AGW,
which hunted down global warming deniers to provide automated fact-based responses
explaining the science. One Hacker News commenter described it at the time as a "pro-active
search engine," able to answer questions people didn't even know they needed correcting on -particularly interesting given the current trend of messaging bots launched by Google,
Facebook and others to do just that. Other examples include the SNAP_R bot that security
researchers used to phish Twitter users, and @BrandLover7 which absolutely loves your
product.
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Thomas Kuhlenbeck
I chatted with Sarah, and she explained that a big part of the motivation is not to engage in
harassing behavior, but to "expose reactionaries and harassers." Since the bot doesn't
automatically tweet at anyone, it only picks arguments with the folks who are searching
Twitter for keywords to argue. As she puts it, "I'd like the project to help people critically look
at how toxic Twitter can be, especially for people expressing these kinds of opinions. That it
also makes the people engaging in this sort of behavior looks ridiculous is a nice side eect."
No matter what ends up happening to Twitter, it would be nice if whoever controls it took a
at these behaviors and applied it to addressing abuse on the platform. Unfortunately,
look
I
Login Of course, if
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think there's
little indication
that will happen under its current
administration.
any of those Silicon Valley companies working on bots need a side project, assigning everyone
an AI might be a worthwhile 20 percent project. While it can't address the very real issues of
stalking and harassment that aects our safety, at least this way trolls get the attention they so
clearly crave and the rest of us keep the time they're hoping to steal. It's a win-win.
Source: Sarah Nyberg (Twitter)

Coverage: Washington Post, DailyDot, The Verge, Nora Reed, Sarah Nyberg, NYMag
In this article: ai, alt-right, bot, culture, internet, racist, SarahNyberg, script, socialmedia, troll, Twitter
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Sarah Nyberg's Twitter Bot Feeds The Emptiness of Alt-Right Trolls

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10/16/2016

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