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Discussion on: How I Created Two Twitter Bots

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peter profile image
Peter Kim Frank

Great write-up, Ben! Always excited when I get a notification that you've published a new article.

Coding for Liberal Arts Programmers

Subscribed.

What's the typical delay on your "Remember Us All" bot? Meaning, how long does it take for your bot to "reply" after the initial tweet? I've definitely noticed the mad-dash from other accounts and would imagine it's something of an arms-race to be one of the first accounts to reply. Presumably Twitter weighs the reply speed against things like "Verified" and "# of followers" when they sort the replies to a tweet. Would be interested in the various techniques to clamp down that delay.

Thanks again for a great post.

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Ben Greenberg

Thanks Peter!

That's a good question, which I am not sure I have a good answer for. I wonder if anyone else knows how that "arms race" is calculated on Twitter's end. My bot is set to follow his account and post a reply as soon as it detects a tweet, but what "soon" means is not clear to me either. Something to definitely look into.

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Ben Greenberg

Just an update I think you might find interesting Peter. My "Remember Us All" bot ended up getting suspended twice. Whereas my job retweeting bot is still going strong. Both are essentially doing similar actions on Twitter with similar intervals between tweets. The only difference primarily is the content. It looks like Twitter has a low threshold for content that falls in this category, which is interesting to me because the platform definitely doesn't feel like a neutral zone! Anyways, after the second suspension, it was becoming too much work to keep on appealing it and the bot is currently "sleeping" for the time being.

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peter profile image
Peter Kim Frank

Very interesting. I would think the "First replies to Trump" arena is the most competitive and tightly watched area for bots on the entire site. So it's not totally surprising to me that the "Remember Us All" bot got suspended, especially given the subject matter and likelihood that people are reporting it.

Thanks for circling back here; I've been curious about this type of stuff for a long time.