There's a bot saying nice things to everyone on Twitter

The internet can be a horrible place sometimes. People frequently send abuse using a cloak of anonymity and cyberbullying is rife.

To try to counteract this, US anti-bullying charity Champions Against Bullying has teamed up with advertising agency Deutsch to create the NiceBot.

The bot sends out a friendly tweet every 36 seconds and the aim of its creators is eventually to reach 300 million Twitter users - which, as AdWeek points out, will take 342 years.

While it only launched this week, it has already sent out nearly 5,000 positive messages.

While spam is normally thought of as something negative, we figured that if the message was simple and positive enough, people would respond favourably—and maybe even be tempted to spread some niceness themselves.

• Jeff Vinnick, Deutsch

The charity and ad agency have also created some physical NiceBots which are being sent round to celebrities and, with the help of a 4G connection and a Raspberry Pi processor, displaying the messages as they go out on Twitter.

The NiceBot's mission is to spread niceness to everyone it can. It doesn't worry about the response. It simply thinks everyone is deserving of kindness.

• Jeff Vinnick

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