The company notes bots can be used on its platform for creative or innovative purposes. The social media platforms generally try to weed out harmful bots, said Barr.Ī representative of Twitter said “bots” had become a catch-all term that can often mischaracterize the nature of the account. Representatives for YouTube, Facebook and its Instagram subsidiary did not respond to requests for comment. The company did not analyze Reddit data, but Barr said he would expect to see a similar pattern of activity on Reddit, indicating bot-like or coordinated management of conversations.Ī representative for Reddit did not comment beyond Huffman’s testimony. Thousands of fake accounts can be purchased for as little as $200, it said. It doesn’t have the exact same pattern every day for a month,” he said.īased on its authenticity scoring system, PiiQ estimates there are tens of thousands of bot accounts hyping GameStop, the meme stocks, and Dogecoin, a cryptocurrency swept up in the frenzy. When you think of organic content, it’s variable in the day, variable day-to-day. “We saw clear patterns of artificial behavior across the other four social media platforms.
Such patterns are indicative of bots, said Aaron Barr, co-founder and chief technology officer of PiiQ. PiiQ said it identified very similar daily “start and stop patterns” in the GameStop-related posts, with activity starting at the beginning of the trading day, followed by a large spike at the end of the trading day. For comparison, it also assessed posts on an unrelated set of stocks. PiiQ Media’s analysis of Twitter Inc, Facebook Inc, Instagram and YouTube posts, however, found that bots used the platforms to push GameStop and other “meme” stocks, although it is unclear how influential they were in the overall saga.Ī startup that focuses on social media risks, PiiQ said it examined patterns of keywords such as “Hold the Line” and GameStop’s stock symbol, “GME,” across conversations and profiles prior to the Jan. Reddit Chief Executive Steve Huffman told Congress this month that bots, artificial or fake accounts with automated content, had not played a “significant role” in GameStop Reddit message traffic. Shares of GameStop soared last month after Reddit users banded together to squeeze hedge funds that had bet against the video game retailer and other companies. WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Bots on major social media platforms have been hyping up GameStop Corp and other “meme” stocks, according to an analysis by Massachusetts-based cybersecurity company PiiQ Media, suggesting organized economic or foreign actors may have played a role in the Reddit-driven trading frenzy.
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