ok, so i would like you to meet laleh, laleh karahiya.e a good bot, a bot that calls people out for using sectarian hate speech. what laleh does is every time someone on twitter tweets certain offensive terms, certain sectarian hate speech, laleh will send a reply to them on twitter and say, "hey, do you think this word you used is sectarian hate speech?" our experiment is innocent enough but, used maliciously, laleh could be spreading propaganda and false information around twitter. the gulf crisis has revealed another way in which twitter can be manipulated. this time it involves hash tags. these are key words in a tweet that allow people to search for a message on twitter. the more times these hash tags are re—tweeted, the more popular that message appears to be. both sides in the gulf crisis have benefited from hash tags that look as though they've spread widely, but does that mean these messages are truly popular? or is itjust that they have been re—tweeted by bogus bots? ben nimmo is a seniorfellow at the atlantic council, an americ