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Ask HN: What to do about a Twitter bot attack

2 points by Arivian ↗ HN
My friend's company is being targetted by a Twitter bot "attack." There are a 100 or so accounts that are obvious bots and that are posting untrue tweets directed at his company. Tools like Hoaxy have confirmed these accounts are bots, but it's also really obvious. All of them have a similar generic landscape background, a random quote from Goodreads, and except for these tweets aimed at my friend's company, they only have a few rewteets. I've tried helping him by using Twitter's report feature and even their contact us feature with a hand written message, but of course, nothing has come from this. We're not sure what the attacker's end game is, but it's placing a lot of stress on my friend and he's not sure what's next.

Is there anything else we can try? These are obvious bots that are spewing misinformation, but Twitter doesn't seem to care.

3 comments

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Nextgrid
Is it malicious/libellous and what's your budget to deal with this? Depending on your jurisdiction maybe legal threats against Twitter (for failing to remove the offending content) could work - I suggest you speak to a lawyer.
Arivian
Yes, they are malicious and libelous. It is a smallish company (< 100 employees) so they definitely don't have the budget to take on Twitter. The turnaround time on that might also be so long that the damage will already have been done.
Nextgrid
> take on

You don’t have to take them on. Pay a lawyer an hour or so to consult and see if they can write a strongly worded letter - it doesn’t actually have to be a lawsuit.