I’VE warned of the dangers of social media before, but today I want to focus on Twitter.
Campaigners have twigged that it’s an effective tool to promote a cause, or react to an event or announcement.
I have personal experience of one case where a Twitter storm of protest persuaded the Government to change course when, frankly, it shouldn’t have.
Frequently, the tweets are either abusive or threatening, underserving of their impact.
In addition, much of the information disseminated is demonstrably fake.
New research from the universities of Southern California and Indiana found that 15 per cent of Twitter account holders are not real people, but so-called ‘bots’.
That translates into a staggering 48 million phantom Twitter users.
And Facebook admitted in November that the world’s largest social media platform may host up to 60 million ‘automated’ accounts.
These fake accounts can reshape political debate, defraud businesses, ruin reputations and promote terrorist or extremist propaganda and recruitment.
On Twitter, most are ‘amplification bots’, which follow certain accounts, tweeting and retweeting their posts until they swamp all-comers.
Investors, from criminals to entrepreneurs, pay for promotional tweets selling products or services.
Celebrities increase their approval ratings and therefore market value by buying online followers.
Countries like China pay for hundreds of thousands of tweets in order to spread influence abroad, though Twitter is banned in China.
Trump’s election, the EU referendum, the Arab Spring and other global upheavals have all been tainted by massive online activity.
Yet the creation and sale of ‘bots’ fall into a legal grey zone, with sites openly selling fake accounts.
Regrettably, the social media giants say it’s too difficult to identify and suspend them.
The Prime Minister has repeatedly demanded that these tech companies put their houses in order, and it’s high time they did.