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Hey I run a bot and people love it. It adds value and regularlt triggers conversation. All bots are not about porn and mixtapes!

• dmix 9y ago
  This whole bot thing is turning into a classic hysteria. I really hope it doesn't end up harming a bunch of the 'good guys' like most of the quickly assembled shoddy 'solutions' most public hysterias generate, rather than stopping the legit 'bad guys'. There have been countless examples of well-intentioned but heavy-handed intervention being a net-negative for society [1]. There could very well be some really interesting legitimately useful bots that will get swept up in this. Or platform limitations added which cripple the utility of all bots...with some an unmeasurable potential loss via future bots which were never created as a result. ....Meanwhile the 'bad guys' find a hundred loop holes to keep operating. The key is keeping this to a case-by-case enforcement...whether at an individual or specific use-case based level. Not some overarching limitation or stigmatization of bots (across all social media). [1] See: the drug war, 1970s NYC/Toronto rent control laws resulting in a far lower supply of affordable housing and more dilapidated tenements, anti-oil pipeline activism resulting in more environmental harm via rail and truck transit, pro-poverty housing regulation creating isolated urban ghettos, wage laws reducing total long-term net income for all low-income workers than it gains employed workers in the short term, etc, etc.
• makomk 9y ago
  What gets me is that most news organisations are probably heavy Twitter bot users themselves.