Twitter Distinguishes The Good Bots From The Bad With New Labeling Feature

Twitter Inc TWTR said on Thursday it is piloting a labeling feature that allows accounts on the social media platform to be easily identified as the "good bots."

What Happened: The feature is designed to help social media users differentiate the automated accounts — those that retweet news updates, traffic and weather announcements or any other public service updates — from those run by humans.

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

— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) September 9, 2021

The feature labels only those it dubs as good bots but is not yet designed to identify the "bad bots" that spread misinformation or spam.

Twitter said it is currently testing out the feature with a few accounts and will soon make available the option to add labels. 

See Also: Twitter Is Creating A New Account Type Just For Bots

Why It Matters: After years of promise, Twitter is putting in place to badge bots as human or not. The social media company’s CEO Jack Dorsey was in 2018 asked during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing whether he agreed users had a right to know if they were speaking to a bot or a human on Twitter’s platform. Dorsey had then said Twitter was considering identifying bots.

As per a CNBC report, Dorsey had in 2018 lost 200,000 followers after it deleted the so-called “locked accounts” as part of an initiative to cleanse the platform of bots. 

Price Action: Twitter shares closed 0.31% higher at $62.46 on Thursday.