A Twitter spambot ‘predicted the Paris attacks’ two days before they happened

The recent attacks on Paris by ISIS have shocked the world.

While people all over the world grieve, some look to find reason where there is none. We're not sure how this was discovered, but a spam account on Twitter (@PZbooks) appears to have predicted the horrific events in Paris on November 11 - two days before they happened. https://twitter.com/PZbooks/status/664529154344419329 Of course, people are freaking out about this bizarre coincidence, with many labelling it a "false flag" - a common term used by conspiracy theorists to describe something they believe to have been staged by the government in order to distract the population from a separate issue. https://twitter.com/Mufffinhead/status/666219963024351237 https://twitter.com/daizy1999/status/665710847059185664 https://twitter.com/Jd612J/status/666516770845429760 While it is a very strange coincidence, that's all this appears to be. The people/automated system behind @PZbooks aren't psychics. The reason behind the tweet is very simple. Basically, the @PZbooks account is a spambot which randomly cobbles together tweets by taking stuff that has already been posted by the breaking news account @pzf. In this case, the @PZbooks bot simply slapped two old @pzf tweets together to make a new one - combining a post about the Charlie Hebdo attacks in January with one about an attack on a Nigerian mosque from this time last year. https://twitter.com/pzf/status/538422123094888448 https://twitter.com/pzf/status/552801974991998976 In the end, the two posts combined to give an eerie 'prediction' of what went on to happen on Friday night while also inadvertently highlighting the fact that these kinds of attacks are sadly common in today's world and have as many - if not more - Muslim victims as anyone.