Would love a non political explanation of bots

[fowl_mood]

I get the general idea. But, how do they work from start to finish; how can you tell them from real people posts; what do you look for to find a bot?

What percentage of posters on social media are paid to post? Do we know?

And why do social media companies not try to shut down bots?

 

[SlashElectric]

Bots are way more than social media posts. Bots fall under a booming category called robotic process automation, or RPA. An easy to understand example are the chat windows that pop up on a website (known as "chatbot windows," example of one shown below) offering help and can usually answer one or two levels of questioning via AI.

If you want to learn more about how they work, 2 of the industry leaders are UIPath and Kofax. Here's some links to their summary-level content; plenty of deep rabbit holes you can take by starting with this info.

UIPath RPA Overview
Gartner Magic Quadrant for RPA Download Link
Kofax RPA Overview
Kofax RPA Datasheet

Regarding bot use in social media specifically, bots are a hard problem to solve. There are lots of legitimate uses for bots in social media. Obviously, you can use a bot pretty easily for illegitimate reasons (not dissimilar to a baseball bat or frying pan). Here's a few articles on how Twitter has been attempting to deal with the issues posed by bots:

Washington Post: Twitter Sweeping Fake Accounts
Wired: Twitter Can't Keep Up With Junk Accounts
Vox: Facebook Deletes 1.3B Fake Accounts
Medium: How to Make a Chatbot Using Google Assistant

Hopefully these starting points help. RPA is only going to grow exponentially in both our business and personal lives. Governance is going to be a real issue.

Chatbot Window Example:

I get the general idea. But, how do they work from start to finish; how can you tell them from real people posts; what do you look for to find a bot?

What percentage of posters on social media are paid to post? Do we know?

And why do social media companies not try to shut down bots?

 

[fowl_mood]

Bots are way more than social media posts. Bots fall under a booming category called robotic process automation, or RPA. An easy to understand example are the chat windows that pop up on a website (known as "chatbot windows," example of one shown below) offering help and can usually answer one or two levels of questioning via AI.

If you want to learn more about how they work, 2 of the industry leaders are UIPath and Kofax. Here's some links to their summary-level content; plenty of deep rabbit holes you can take by starting with this info.

UIPath RPA Overview
Gartner Magic Quadrant for RPA Download Link
Kofax RPA Overview
Kofax RPA Datasheet

Regarding bot use in social media specifically, bots are a hard problem to solve. There are lots of legitimate uses for bots in social media. Obviously, you can use a bot pretty easily for illegitimate reasons (not dissimilar to a baseball bat or frying pan). Here's a few articles on how Twitter has been attempting to deal with the issues posed by bots:

Washington Post: Twitter Sweeping Fake Accounts
Wired: Twitter Can't Keep Up With Junk Accounts
Vox: Facebook Deletes 1.3B Fake Accounts
Medium: How to Make a Chatbot Using Google Assistant

Hopefully these starting points help. RPA is only going to grow exponentially in both our business and personal lives. Governance is going to be a real issue.

Chatbot Window Example:

Thanks, I'll check your info.

 

[Dizzy01]

Chances are if you’ve used the chat feature on any website you’ve chatted with a bot. They can provide a lot of canned answers to common questions for companies. Some companies use them for advertising on social media by having them scan for keyword then putting a canned statement on any post with that keyword.

 

[Fearless Gamecock]

I get the general idea. But, how do they work from start to finish; how can you tell them from real people posts; what do you look for to find a bot?

What percentage of posters on social media are paid to post? Do we know?

And why do social media companies not try to shut down bots?

SlashElectric gave you a great explanation. From a political point of view (my background), I can tell you that they are invaluable nowadays. They are being used more and more to help shape, or reinforce public opinion. Go to any Fox News, CNN, CBS (etc) post on social media, and you will see the comments riddled with "bot accounts", all transmitting a variety of interconnected messages. Often times, the "top comments" will be from bot accounts, and then the subsequent comments will be a mixture of bot and real accounts. This helps shape a certain narrative that certain actors want you to believe; hammering home certain key words and phrases.

Twitter, especially, has a major issue on their hands as bot accounts are used frequently to get misinformation trending. The information will start with bot accounts, and then will be shared by people who may agree (or disagree) with the message. You see this a lot with the conspiracy theory crowd (such as the QANON groups). This is why people have to be careful with what they share.

I don't think we know the percentages, but it's quite a bit. The easiest way to spot a bot account is when they continually use talking points, or post the same comments over and over. When you select their profile, most likely they will have a generic picture, not a lot of history, or have huge periods where they are active (and then inactive). Also, especially on Facebook, if all that account does is post political material, they most likely are a bot account (i.e. nothing personal). Twitter it is harder to manage because most people don't post very personal things on that platform.

Social media companies are trying to combat this, but there isn't a lot they can do. It is here to stay unfortunately, and foreign actors are employing these strategies more and more.

 

[fowl_mood]

This thread is great media literacy. I understood somewhat; I had no idea about the volume and process.

 

[Rollerdude123]

This thread is great media literacy. I understood somewhat; I had no idea about the volume and process.

On twitter you can usually tell by the sheer volume of their tweets, usually very few followers and hundreds if not thousands of tweets about the same subject 24 hours a day

I’ve seen some reply but the English is very broken.

 

[Legendary Cock]

I'm convinced there's a bot posting here on FGF.

 

[winloseortie]

Austin Powers, “Oh Baby!! Fembots are shaggarefic!”

 

[GamecockJL]

Folks on twitter who claim all cops are nazis are bots I assume.

 

[fowl_mood]

Anyone tried Parler?

 

[Rollerdude123]

Folks on twitter who claim all cops are nazis are bots I assume.

some could be.

twitter bots have only one thing in common- sow division. I’m ok with division but for bots, that’s the only goal.