Half The Accounts Tweeting About Virus Are Likely Bots: Report

If you ever wonder who is behind some of the tweets you see propagating the latest coronavirus theories and conspiracies, there's a 50-50 chance it's not even a real person.

That's right — nearly half of the Twitter accounts spreading messages on the social media platform about the coronavirus pandemic are likely bots, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University said this week.

Researchers sifted through more than 200 million tweets about the virus since January and found that about 45 percent were sent by accounts that behave more like computerized robots than humans. It's too early to say who's behind the accounts, but according to a report by NPR, the tweets are doing a great job sowing division in America.

"We do know that it looks like it's a propaganda machine, and it definitely matches the Russian and Chinese playbooks, but it would take a tremendous amount of resources to substantiate that," Kathleen Carley, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, told NPR.

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