Online social networks are crawling with autonomous computer programs that spread propaganda. You probably have heard the term bot before. You probably have even heard this is happening to Americans. But how much do you know about it?
Let’s start with what a bot is. A bot, short for robot, and also called an internet bot– is a computer program that operates as an agent for a user, or other program, or to simulate a human activity. Bots are normally used to automate certain tasks, meaning they can run without specific instructions from humans. That means that bots can do a lot. To oversimplify it; it’s a program run by a machine that performs really simple tasks. Typically at regular intervals.
How much of this is happening? A lot. Russian web brigades are state-sponsored anonymous Internet political commentators and trolls linked to the Government of Russia. They operate on a daily basis, pushing out content that is strictly pro-Russia, and anti-Western. Bots and fake accounts pushed China’s vision of the Winter Olympic Wonderland.
“The country’s propagandists used a variety of tools online to promote a vision of the Games that is free of rancor or controversy,” said The New York Times
These bots are often used in attempt to manipulate voters and otherwise influence political processes. Automated social media accounts can create “misinformation networks” that spread false claims and facts that were created just to fan partisan disagreement. “Social networks are filled with a large amount of misinformation, which often misleads the public to make wrong decisions,” says a journal from Hindawi. This “poses serious threats to public safety and social order,” continues the study.
That same journal from Hindawi goes on to explain that social media has become very important to the communication of information. The authors explain that in spite of this, it has also contributed to the spread of misinformation. “The spread of misinformation on social media,” claims the journal, “misleads the public and prompts them to make wrong decisions.”
Fake social-media accounts are harder to detect than ever before. They seem more legitimate. They have more human tendencies, they reply more effectively, they generate content more believably. If they are difficult to detect, are there some we are not detecting at all? In 2016, an election year in the United States, it became clear that bots were being used to try to manipulate public sentiment on contentious issues including gun control and the presidential election itself.
“In 2016, you found that nearly 19% of all tweets related to the election that year were generated by bots,” said Emilio Ferrara
“Back in 2016, bots used simple strategies that were easy to detect. But today, there are artificial intelligence (AI) tools that produce human-like language,” said Emilio Ferrara. “We are not able to detect bots that use AI, because we can’t distinguish them from human accounts.” Talk about disconcerting. If 19% of all tweets related to the election in 2016 were generated by bots, could even more of our discourse today be generated and influenced by bots?
“We are seeing that bots are effective in putting stuff into people’s feeds, and in amplifying messages. This has been found by many people, not just us,” says Filippo Menczer, a professor of informatics and computer science at Indiana University’s School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering. Automated accounts and misinformation exist on all the major tech platforms, not just Twitter . It may feel like you only hear about Twitter. This is partially true. It is because it is the most open platform, and it provides more data to track than other platforms such as Facebook, and Instagram.
“As we got closer and closer to the core, we found more and more bots”—and fewer references to fact-checking sites such as snopes.com,” Menczer explains. “When core accounts did reference fact-checking sites it was usually to mock them or to falsely state the fact checkers found a bogus claim to be true.”
“Bots today have more believable online profiles, more advanced conversational skills and appear to be legitimate users embedded in human networks,” said Ben Nimmo, director of investigations at network analysis firm Graphika. “Some automated accounts are also partially managed by humans — profiles known as “cyborgs” or “sock puppets.”
AI researchers at Google have trained a giant neural network using a whopping 341GB of discussions scraped from public social media to create what they believe is the most human-like chatbot ever. They named the digital creation, ‘Meena.’ Google describes the bot as an end-to-end, neural conversational model that learns to respond sensibly to a given conversational context. Meena scores within 10% of the human SSA average, a scoring system invented by the company to measure the life-like ability of the bot.
Recently, in the face of Elon Musk’s high profile bid to buy Twitter, the platform has claimed that fewer than 5% of accounts are bots. They have even described bots themselves. “People often refer to bots when describing everything from automated account activity to individuals who would prefer to be anonymous for personal or safety reasons,” wrote Twitter in their blog. “Or avoid a photo because they’ve got strong privacy concerns.”
In closing, I urge you to keep all of this in mind. To consider this for the future. Social media is flooded with grandstanding from human beings. From sock puppet accounts controlled by various actors. And by swarms of fake accounts championing causes that many may not even believe in. It is better to question everything than to jump on a bandwagon and fight like hell for a cause. You may very well be surrounded by enemies rather than friends.
Sources Cited:
Baraniuk, C. (2018, March 27). How twitter bots help fuel political feuds. Scientific American. Retrieved May 27, 2022, from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-twitter-bots-help-fuel-political-feuds/
Guglielmi, G. (2020, October 28). The next-generation bots interfering with the US election. Nature News. Retrieved May 27, 2022, from https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03034-5
Luo, H., Cai, M., & Cui, Y. (2021, December 16). Spread of misinformation in social networks: Analysis based on Weibo Tweets. Security and Communication Networks. Retrieved May 25, 2022, from https://www.hindawi.com/journals/scn/2021/7999760/
Myers, S. L., Mozur, P., & Kao, J. (2022, February 18). Bots and fake accounts push China’s vision of Winter Olympic Wonderland. The New York Times. Retrieved May 25, 2022, from https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/18/technology/china-olympics-propaganda.html
Person, & Dang, S. (2022, May 2). Twitter estimates spam, fake accounts comprise less than 5% of users -filing. Reuters. Retrieved May 26, 2022, from https://www.reuters.com/technology/twitter-estimates-spam-fake-accounts-represent-less-than-5-users-filing-2022-05-02/
Samuels, E., & Akhtar, M. (2020, March 5). Analysis | are ‘bots’ manipulating the 2020 conversation? here’s what’s changed since 2016. The Washington Post. Retrieved May 26, 2022, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/11/20/are-bots-manipulating-conversation-heres-whats-changed-since/
Towards a conversational agent that can chat about…anything. Google AI Blog. (2020, January 28). Retrieved May 27, 2022, from https://ai.googleblog.com/2020/01/towards-conversational-agent-that-can.html
Twitter. (n.d.). Bot or not? the facts about platform manipulation on Twitter. Twitter. Retrieved May 27, 2022, from https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/bot-or-not
What is a bot? | bot definition | cloudflare. (n.d.). Retrieved May 25, 2022, from https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/bots/what-is-a-bot/
Wikimedia Foundation. (2022, April 12). Russian Web Brigades. Wikipedia. Retrieved May 24, 2022, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_web_brigades
