bots bots bots bots bots

@tinysubversons makes bots. Here is a community-created resource he recently shared on how to make your own bot, if you’re so inclined. Here is a list of bots that he has created. My favorite bot he’s made is @twoheadlines, which mashes up headlines from two different news articles (and here’s a piece on how it works.) Wikipedia is often edited by bots. You can see the percentage of bots vs. humans editing Wikipedia in real time. There’s also a bot that tweets anonymous edits made to Wikipedia from IP addresses in Congress.

Here are three ideas for bots:

1. A bot that predicts employment shifts within sports, media, politics and publishing based on an abnormal rise in followers from a particular employer within a certain period of time. Example: Bot says “30 people from the Philadelphia Phillies have just followed @person in the past day.”
2. A bot that makes up random bits from NYT wedding announcements. Example: “The bride is a descendent from NOUN,” where NOUN is taken from a random list of occupations. Or something.
3. A bot that shares a random piece of content from a random local public media station every day.

If you are interested in building any of these bots, let me know. I have a bit of Python knowledge and would love to work with others making one of these. Want to get my newsletter? I am sending out things like this sporadically: