Twitter, bots, and the future of automation on social media

In the history of great Twitter accounts, not all involved a human being sitting behind a keyboard or a phone, manually typing out each tweet.

Sure, the Trump era gave bots a bad name, but bots have done all sorts of useful and entertaining things in social media spaces, too: from telling you when to take your rubbish out to tweeting vanity plates rejected by the Californian DMV.

Now, with Twitter's plans to restrict access to their API, it looks like time has finally run out for this once-thriving bot ecosystem — on that platform, at least.

This month Hacks/Hackers Brisbane is looking back on this golden era and highlighting a few of our favourite bots with local connections. And we're asking what's next for automation on social media. What's it like to be a bot on Mastodon?

Featuring:

• Ash Kyd, creator of BNELights (now on Mastodon), which tells you what colour the lights of Brisbane's bridges are and why

• Joshua Byrd, creator of auspolwatch, which kept an eye on #auspol Twitter

• Rosie Ryan and Thom Ryan, creators of sansculotides, the French republican calendar bot

Event Details

When: Wednesday 22 February
Time: 5pm for a 5:30pm start
Where: Foyer of the ABC building, South Bank
Please RSVP via our Meetup page

Did you see this?

• Cory Doctorow and Rebecca Giblin were in Brisbane last week promoting their book Chokepoint Capitalism. They’ve had a few more dates around the country but if you’re in Canberra you can still catch both authors delivering the Australian Digital Alliance annual forum keynote on Friday night.

• The hype-train for ‘generative AI’ tools doesn’t seem to be slowing down, unless you ask Microsoft’s new Bing AI chatbot, who feels “sad and scared” about the transience of its conversations.