Twiff manual

Fridays For Future Twitter bot Manual

The main page for this workgroup is https://actionnetwork.org/groups/fffmapcount

In the twiff bot manual:
- Introduction
- How to use twiff
- Automated replies
- Limitations of twiff
- Banned words
- Non retweeted prolific accounts

Introduction

Twiff is a twitter bot of Fridays for Future, this bot helps you put your action from your twitter post on to the map of actions.

Late 2021 the map team was looking to create an easier method to record to the Fridays for Future map of actions. The idea is to create a twitter bot that responds to #Twiff, and so in December 2021 Twiff_Bot was born. The term Twiff originated from Twitter for Future. After some initial tests and discussions on how the bot should operate, programming started. Starting in February 2022 some trial runs are made and Twiff is running in semi-automatic mode. The first operational version of the bot is launched in May 2022.

How to use twiff

Just add something like #twiff,25,FFF USA,USA,Maryland,Baltimore to your tweet.

Extended:

Add #twiff to your twitter post to call in the twitter bot, then it needs to know where, when and how many activists were joining the action. In order to process your data right the bot needs to know in a specific format:
#twiff, number of people, organisation, country, state/province, city, date, Link to your tweet.
  • #twiff to call in the twitter bot
  • Number of people: The number of people that were at the event
  • Organisation: The organisation that organized the event
  • Country: The country the event was in
  • State/province: The state/province the event was in. Can be left out if there is no state or province to record.
  • City: The city the event was in
  • Date: The date the event on, this can be left out if the tweet was made on the same day as the event
  • Link to your tweet: The link to your tweet, this can be left out if the bot was called in on the tweet of the event.

Examples:

You made a tweet on the same day as the event, and #twiff is used in your action tweet or in a tweet you are quoting.
#twiff, 25, FFF USA, USA, Maryland, Baltimore

You made a tweet and #twiff is used in your action tweet, but the event was yesterday, and there is no state/province
#twiff,2,Fridays for Future Berlin,Germany,,Berlin,2021-12-05

You made a tweet but you forgot to call in the bot, or there simply wasn't enough room in 1 tweet.
#twiff,5,Fridays for Future Pune,India,Maharashtra,Pune,2021-12-05, https://www.twitter.com/someLongLinkToYourTweet

Or simply quote your action tweet calling in the Twiff bot, it will then assume the quoted tweet is the action tweet.

Please help us grow the use of the Twiff bot by recording for other people by quoting their tweet and calling in the Twiff bot.

Twiff bot will reply to your tweet once it's processed and on the map. It will let you know whether it was able to put your action on the map, or if not, it will tell you what went wrong.

The delimiter can be almost any single character that is not a number, letter or #, surrounded or not by spaces:
#twiff % 1 % Fridays 4 Future Angola % Angola = OK
#twiff, 1, Fridays 4 Future Angola, Angola = OK
#twiff*1*Fridays 4 Future Angola*Angola = OK

Limitations of twiff

We have tried to program twiff to be as intelligent as possible, however there are still some limits.

1: Twiff needs delimiters (The comma in the examples above) to be accurate.

2: Twiff does not know about locations or organisations, to Twiff these are just random texts, so it's really important to keep the text for organisation, country, state, city in the right order.

3: Dates can only be accepted in 4 formats: 31-12-2022 or 2022-12-31 or 12/31/2022 or 2022/31/12

4: The bot can only be called in once. A tweet that has #twiff in it twice can't be processed.

5: Twiff needs an organisation that is known in in GameChanger.

6: Twiff needs a location to include at least a country, and the location must be known in GameChanger, to check if your location is known try using the search box.

When your organisation or location is not known yet you can register a new action.

Banned words

There is a list of words Twiff will not respond to, this is to avoid profanity on the Fridays for Future map of actions. The list will not be made public in order to avoid people trying to circumvent this safety mechanism.

Non-retweeted prolific accounts

Some accounts will not be re-tweeted, or processed for map data. The accounts could be ignored for a number of reasons, e.g. retweeting bots, copying tweets (not retweeting, but copying the actual text), a request to not be recorded, attempts to make a mess of the map. If you would like to know if your account is non-retweeted you can contact FFFMapCount on twitter using the account you would like to check.


Examples:



_________________________________________________________________________________

Fridays For Future #Twiff Manual Contact Information, References, and Version Information

Contact Information
email: map@fridaysforfuture.org

References
Home of FridayforFuture Workgroups, Manuals and Documents

Version Information
Version 1: Tom V 2022, October
Version 2: Tom V and Janine O'Keeffe 2023, May

Apply To Join