Thread by @conspirator0

Breaking #FoxNews alert: this isn't actually a breaking #FoxNews alert. It is, however, a brief analysis of the not-so-fine art of automated tweeting of breaking #FoxNews alerts.

cc: @ZellaQuixote

We downloaded all tweets containing "breaking #FoxNews alert" from the previous 10 days and categorized them as follows:

mostly/fully automated: tweets 24/7 or 90%+ of tweets via automation services
partially automated: uses automation service for #FoxNews tweets
other: other

We ended up with 6578 tweets from 2977 accounts. 2332 of these tweets (35.5%) were sent by one of 74 accounts flagged as mostly/fully automated, and an additional 909 tweets (13.8%) were sent by 35 accounts classified as partially automated.

The automated and partially automated accounts rarely miss a breaking #FoxNews alert - generally about 100 of the 109 accounts pick up any given tweet.

The automated "breaking #FoxNews alert" tweets are posted almost exclusively via IFTTT. Another interesting thing - 3224 of 3231 (99.8%) of the original tweets (non-retweets) are automated. Here, the human accounts play the role of amplifying the bots.

H/T @TheTawniest for the lead.