Update (February 17, 2022): Twitter’s now allowing all automated accounts to put a label — so you can identify them as bot accounts. The company began experimenting with this feature last September, and making it available to a wider audience starting today.
Get your bots in here! Remember when we chatted about all things, #GoodBots? Well now we are celebrating the bots who make a positive contribution to Twitter, all over the world. pic.twitter.com/e1OqJjRZiG
— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) February 16, 2022
However, there’s no detail available about how developers can apply these labels, and how Twitter will verify these applications. We’ve asked the company for more information, and we’ll update the story if we hear back.
While this is a good step in clearly marking automated accounts, this is largely developer-dependant. So you might see a lot of rouge bot accounts without any labels.
Twitter‘s rolling out its new verification process starting today. Apart from this, the company also shared that it’s planning to introduce a new label for a special type of accounts: bots.
The social network has a ton of bots that tweet out information or colorize your black and white photos. The company said that it wants to mark some of these useful and non-harmful automated accounts with a label. The profile of these accounts will look something like this:
The label shows the owner or the maker of the account as well. Tweets from these accounts will also have a special mark when they’ll show up on your timeline.
Examples of bots that’ll get these labels are bots that help you find vaccines or warn you about seismic activity in your area.
The company didn’t say if owners of these bot accounts will be able to apply for this label. We’ve reached out to the firm for a comment, and we’ll update this story if we hear back.
Twitter said that automated account labels will roll out for selected accounts starting this July. The company added that it’s working on a label to memorialize accounts to remember folks who have passed away. Plus, it’s also thinking about how to clearly mark humor and satire accounts.