By Dian Schaffhauser, THE Journal
Two undergraduate computer science students at the University of California, Berkeley have undertaken a job Twitter has been struggling with: figuring out when incendiary tweets have come from a bot instead of a real person. Ash Bhat and Rohan Phadte recently released Botcheck.me, a Google Chrome browser extension that places a button onto every Twitter profile and tweet. By clicking the Botcheck.me button, a user can tell whether the account is likely run by a person or an automated program. As the duo explained in a report published in Medium, they undertook the work specifically to address political propaganda bots, which are intended to weaken and subvert American political discourse.
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