A wink is as good as a nod to social media except when it comes to the U.S. Secret Service.
Yes, the US Secret Service is seeking a Twitter sarcasm detector.
The agency is looking for a software system to analyze social media data – especially when it comes to determining whether or not a threat against President Obama is legit or not.
The BBC reported that software should have, among other things, the "ability to detect sarcasm and false positives".
A spokesman for the Secret Service said it currently used the Federal Emergency Management Agency's Twitter analytics and needed its own, adding: "We aren't looking solely to detect sarcasm."
The Washington Post quoted Ed Donovan as saying: "Our objective is to automate our social media monitoring process. Twitter is what we analyze.