Here’s how DARPA trained researchers to kill bots

Bots are a particularly pernicious presence on Twitter. While they can be used for good, (R.I.P., original @horse_ebooks), bots often power spam, scams and, most interestingly, very volatile clusters of political and cultural discussion on Twitter. Last year, DARPA confronted the problem and, according to MIT Tech Review, a new report shows just how researchers were able to identify and shutdown the malicious programs. The report, released last month by researchers at University of Maryland and Carnegie Mellon among others, shows the methods used by the teams in a four-week challenge designed to root out those dastardly “influence” bots. Bots make up…

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