How to build a little #spambot in #R

A very short R-script to build a spam bot:

library(twitteR)
 
ckey <- "1234mykey"
csecret <- "1234mysecret"
atoken <- "45678mytoken"
asecret <- "56789othersecret"
 
setup_twitter_oauth(ckey, csecret, atoken, asecret)
 
LISTTopic <- twListToDF(searchTwitter('#BigData', n=10))
View(LISTTopic)
LISTNames <- unique(LISTTopic$screenName)
text.examples <- c("I am a bot, but I appreciate your work!",
                   "Data is the new bacon!",
                   "There are only 10 kinds of people: Those understanding binary code and others.",
                   "Data is like people – interrogate it hard enough and it will tell you what you want to hear.",
                   "Data that is loved tends to survive.")
for(i in 1:length(LISTNames)){
  message.text <- paste0("Hi @",LISTNames[i], " ",
                           text.examples[sample(length(text.examples),1)])
  print(nchar(message.text))
    try({
      updateStatus(message.text)
    }) -> temp
    if(class(temp)=="try-error"){
      print('Error!')
      Sys.sleep(runif(1,50,100))
    } else{
      print(paste0('i= ',i,' (',LISTNames[i],') is DONE!'))
      Sys.sleep(runif(1,10,22))
  }
}

This little program uses the twitteR package to connect to the REST-API.
The bot takes 10 recent tweets on the topic of #BigData and sends a tweet with a direct mentioning. As text, the bot choses randomly one of five "data jokes".

That's all and the Sys.sleep function is not even necessary.

If you increase the number of tweets a lot and keep it running automatical, your account will probably be blocked in some hours. ;-)