Tag: bots

Read Bbbreaking News: Discovering Amateur News Videos by Monitoring Journalists on Twitter by Andy BaioAndy Baio (Waxy.org)

If you’ve ever looked at the replies on any newsworthy amateur video posted to Twitter, you’ll see an inevitable chorus of news organizations and broadcast journalists in the replies, usually asking two questions:

  1. Did you shoot this video?
  2. Can we use it on all our platforms, affiliates, etc with credit?

That gave me an idea, which I posted to Twitter.

Within two days, a talented developer named Corey Johnson made it real by launching Bbbreaking News.

👓 Who says neuroscientists don’t need more brains? Annotation with SciBot | Hypothesis

Read Who says neuroscientists don’t need more brains? Annotation with SciBot by Maryann Martone (web.hypothes.is/blog/)
You might think that neuroscientists already have enough brains, but apparently not. Over 100 neuroscientists attending the recent annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience (SFN), took part in an annotation challenge: modifying scientific papers to add simple references that automatically generate and attach Hypothesis annotations, filled with key related information. To sweeten the pot, our friends at Gigascience gave researchers who annotated their own papers their very own brain hats.
Replied to a tweet by Christopher TomlinsonChristopher Tomlinson (Twitter)
I suspect I’m missing some context, but taking a stab: the bots are hoping you’ll accept/approve their replies so that you put their links on your page for future clicks as well as SEO purposes. Like most spam operations, they just need an ~2% response rate to make the few cents that make doing this worthwhile. I personally blacklist some of the worst offenders by domain name, IP address, or judicious keywords.