Bot comments Report March 2024

The dataset of toxic bot comments detected in March 2024, spanning from March 1 to March 31, included over 1,500 English messages (n=1,613). The average toxicity score was relatively low at 0.20. However, a significant spike in toxicity occurred on March 27, potentially linked to the bombing of Kharkiv, Ukraine, by Russian forces on that day (see the full list of events here) .

Despite the low average toxicity score, several messages contained highly problematic content with toxic keywords, such as idiot, nazi, new world order, slaughter, rape, subhuman, coward, put them in concentration camps, and blood on your hands.

The word cloud below highlights the 50 most frequently used keywords in the detected bot comments from March 2024. The size of each word reflects its relative frequency compared to others, with prominent terms including black, genocide, terrorists, terroris, death, and immigrants.

This is the top 50 keywords (threat = bold) by bot comments 

The table below presents the various toxic categories detected in the March 2024 dataset, along with their respective frequencies (represented by black dots and explained further below). The Politics category was notably more prominent than the others. However, the content with the highest toxicity score focused on Jews (0.55), which is significantly higher than the scores for other categories (on a scale from 0 to 1, where 1 indicates maximum toxicity). For details on the different categories, check here.

The bar chart below highlights that the most prominent category with the highest toxicity score in March 2024’s dataset of toxic bot comments was Ridicule, followed by Politics. However, within the Contempt category, a small portion of the content had a notably high toxicity score exceeding 0.8. The majority of the toxic bot comments were categorized under Politics, indicating that their primary focus was on influencing political discussions (see the explanation of the different categories here).

These are the number of toxic messages by category by bot comments in March 2024

The keyword network below visualizes the primary focus of toxic bot comments in March 2024. Different colors represent clusters of words that frequently appeared together, highlighting the key narratives promoted by the bot content. The majority of the toxic bot content centered around an antisemitic narrative, featuring keywords such as zionists, genocidal, rape, jewish, and gentiles. A second major narrative focused on the Biden administration and immigration, with commonly associated terms including Biden, immigrants, and illegal.