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Bot Sentinel
Formation2018; 6 years ago (2018)
FounderChristopher Bouzy
Websitebotsentinel.com

Bot Sentinel is a Twitter analytics service founded in 2018 by Christopher Bouzy. It tracks disinformation, inauthentic behavior and targeted harassment on Twitter.[1][2]

History

According to his LinkedIn page, Christopher Bouzy started out as a computer service technician, and founded several firms prior to setting up Bot Sentinel.[3] In the 2000s, Bouzy developed the encryption software Cloak, which Avanquest Software acquired in 2006. Bouzy then developed Nexus Radio, a free platform for recording and playing back radio streams, which was later acquired by an investment group.[4]

Before founding Bot Sentinel, Bouzy ran a dating website called IfSolo and a "peer-to-peer rewards network" known as Bytecent. In the mid-2010s, he was active under the handle "IconicExpert" on Bitcointalk, a forum for crypto traders. During this period, he was accused by several users of using bots and sock puppet accounts to "pump up the value of coins he'd stockpiled". He also developed a special wallet for a digital currency known as BlackCoin, according to co-founder Joshua Bouw. People who purchased the $20 "BlackCoin Card" never received it, and Bouzy allegedly kept a number of coins he had promised to hand out at a canceled promotional event.[5]

Around 2016, Bouzy started teaching himself about machine learning algorithms.[4] He founded Bot Sentinel in 2018,[1] being inspired to do so due to the Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections.[4]

In August 2022, Twitter said it would revoke Bot Sentinel's access to its APIs, saying that Bot Sentinel's tracker activity was in violation of its API policies. At the time, Twitter was in a legal dispute with Elon Musk over his acquisition of the platform.[1]

In October 2022, attorney Nathaniel Broughty, who runs an anti-Amber Heard[4] YouTube channel named NateTheLawyer, filed a lawsuit in Hudson County Superior Court in New Jersey, claiming that he had been incorrectly flagged by Bot Sentinel and defamed by Bouzy.[6] According to Broughty's complaint, Bouzy tweeted that Broughty "went from being the son of two crackheads, a drug dealer, a cop, and a prosecutor, to attacking journalists and me on social media", falsely asserted that he was not a real lawyer, derided him as a "Twitter troll and YouTube grifter", and alleged he had admitted to planting evidence on a suspect when he worked as a police officer. Bouzy filed a motion to dismiss the suit.[5]

In December 2022, Bot Sentinel announced that it would be launching a beta version of Spoutible, a Twitter-like social media platform, in late January 2023.[7] The launch occurred on February 1, 2023, with nearly 150,000 users applying for pre-registration.[8]

Founder

Bouzy was born on May 22, 1975.[9] He grew up in New York City in what he described as a lower middle class upbringing, with his mother, a single parent. They shared a residence with his grandmother, two aunts and two cousins.[4] Bouzy started coding on a Mattel Aquarius computer his mother bought him when he was 9 years old.[4][3]

Bouzy lives in New York,[3] and is married, with a daughter. Bouzy and his family have received harassment due to his work on Bot Sentinel.[4] His mother died in 2021 after being infected with COVID-19 while dealing with cancer; Bouzy said she was afraid to take the COVID-19 vaccine because "she had just heard so many different things [online]", and has cited her memory as part of the reason for being proactive with getting Twitter and other platforms to remove misinformation from their platforms.[4] Bouzy appeared in the 2022 documentary series Harry & Meghan.[2]

Investigations

Prior to the 2020 United States presidential election, Bouzy said that inauthentic Twitter accounts were promoting false or unverified claims of voter fraud, or advancing then-President Donald Trump's unfounded claims of impropriety in the counting of ballots.[10]

In October 2021, Bot Sentinel released their analysis of more than 114,000 tweets about Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, as a result of which they found 83 accounts with a combined number of 187,631 followers that were possibly responsible for approximately 70 percent of the negative content posted about the couple.[11][12][13] The report prompted an investigation by Twitter. The company stated that it found no evidence of "widespread coordination" between the accounts, and said that it had taken action against users who violated Twitter's conduct policy.[12][13] Bouzy was himself responsible for initiating a discourse on Twitter that criticized Harry's brother and sister-in-law Prince William and Catherine, the Prince and Princess of Wales, for their appearance by tweeting that they were "aging in Banana years".[3]

A January 2022 Bot Sentinel report said that online hate campaigns targeting Harry and Meghan had become a "cottage industry" for a few online influencers exclusively posting about the couple. The report described it as "a lucrative hate-for-profit enterprise" where "racism and YouTube ad revenue are the primary motivators", and described the conspiracy theories the influencers promoted about Harry and Meghan as being reminiscent of the QAnon conspiracy theory.[2]

Bouzy has also conducted paid-for private research for the legal team of Amber Heard as well as unpaid research on bot attacks against public figures such as Heard, Meghan Markle, Pete Buttigieg and Lisa Page.[4]

Operation

Bot Sentinel relies on machine learning to identify Twitter bots, using millions of tweets from suspended accounts that are categorized as being either bots or not bots. The service is trained to identify what Bouzy calls "problematic accounts".[14] Its algorithm gives Twitter accounts a score between 0% and 100%, which is based on their resemblance to accounts that violate Twitter's rules.[4]

As of October 2022, Bot Sentinel consisted of Bouzy and three programmers and data scientists. Bot Sentinel receives funding through donations on its website, which allows its browser extensions and hate trackers to be used free of charge by the general public.[4]

References

  1. ^ a b c Hays, Kali (August 22, 2022). "In the midst of its battle with Elon Musk, Twitter threatens to revoke Bot Sentinel's data access after founder suggests Twitter has more than 5% 'bots'". Business Insider. Archived from the original on December 24, 2022. Retrieved December 24, 2022.
  2. ^ a b c Cockerell, Isobel (December 14, 2022). "Meghan never stood a chance against the internet". Coda Media. Archived from the original on December 24, 2022. Retrieved December 24, 2022.
  3. ^ a b c d Wace, Charlotte (December 7, 2022). "Who is Christopher Bouzy in the Harry and Meghan Netflix trailer?". The Times. ISSN 0140-0460. Archived from the original on December 24, 2022. Retrieved December 24, 2022.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Lucas, Jessica (October 14, 2022). "'Sometimes You've Got to Fight Fire With Fire': A Vigilante Coder Goes to War Against Misinformation". The Information. Archived from the original on October 14, 2022. Retrieved January 2, 2022. One anti-Heard YouTuber, NateTheLawyer...
  5. ^ a b Koerner, Brendan I. (June 6, 2023). "'Building a Platform Like Twitter Is Not Difficult'". Wired. Retrieved June 6, 2023.
  6. ^ "An Attorney Who Was Labeled a 'Twitter Troll' Has Lawyered Up". New Jersey Law Journal. November 4, 2022. Archived from the original on January 3, 2023. Retrieved January 2, 2023.
  7. ^ Hays, Kali. "Twitter alternatives that got traction after Elon Musk takeover are suddenly seeing downloads plunge. Which has staying power and who is the next Clubhouse". Business Insider. Archived from the original on December 26, 2022. Retrieved December 26, 2022.
  8. ^ Laubry, Théo (February 3, 2023). "Spoutible, une alternative crédible à Twitter?" [Spoutible, a credible alternative to Twitter?]. Slate (in French). Archived from the original on February 5, 2023. Retrieved February 5, 2023.
  9. ^ Christopher Bouzy [@cbouzy] (May 22, 2021). "BREAKING: I turned 46 today and Matt Gaetz is going through some things" (Tweet). Retrieved December 27, 2022 – via Twitter.
  10. ^ Tucker, Eric; Fox, Ben (April 28, 2021). "Post-election vote tallying raises fresh security concerns". Associated Press. Archived from the original on December 24, 2022. Retrieved December 24, 2022.
  11. ^ Hall, Ellie (October 26, 2021). "Twitter Data Has Revealed A Coordinated Campaign Of Hate Against Meghan Markle". BuzzFeed News. Archived from the original on February 27, 2023. Retrieved February 27, 2023.
  12. ^ a b Cheng, Amy (October 27, 2021). "Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, was target of organized hate campaign on Twitter, report says". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on October 27, 2021. Retrieved October 27, 2021.
  13. ^ a b Davies, Caroline (October 27, 2021). "Meghan target of coordinated Twitter hate campaign, report finds". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Archived from the original on October 7, 2022. Retrieved March 16, 2023.
  14. ^ Mehrotra, Dhruv (September 30, 2022). "Bot Hunting Is All About the Vibes". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. Archived from the original on December 24, 2022. Retrieved December 24, 2022.

External links

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bot_Sentinel&oldid=1158901944

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