An Army Of Denialist Bots

A new study of social media site Twitter finds that there is provides a voice to a vast army of automated Twitter bots routinely providing climate change denialist misinformation and expressing disdain and skepticism regarding legitimate climate change science and information.

The social media conversation over the climate crisis is being reshaped by an army of automated Twitter bots, with a new analysis finding that a quarter of all tweets about climate on an average day are produced by bots, the Guardian can reveal. 

The stunning levels of Twitter bot activity on topics related to global heating and the climate crisis is distorting the online discourse to include far more climate science denialism than it would otherwise.

On an average day during the period studied, 25% of all tweets about the climate crisis came from bots. This proportion was higher in certain topics – bots were responsible for 38% of tweets about “fake science” and 28% of all tweets about the petroleum giant Exxon.

The study doesn't identify the sources behind the bots, but considering their content it seems clear that the goal of the bots is to continue to inject confusion regarding climate science and support the goals of those who wish to delay action on reducing fossil fuel consumption.  Who could have goals like that?