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> curbing social bots may be an effective strategy for mitigating the spread of online misinformation. Why not turn them off entirely? The least of self regula

> curbing social bots may be an effective strategy for mitigating the spread of online misinformation. Why not turn them off entirely? The least of self regulation these popular social media companies can do for humans.

tree_of_item 8y ago
You cannot just "turn them off". What exactly are you going to do?
asaph 8y ago
Not all social media bots are malicious. And not all social media bots are posting content from low credibility sources.
- eiaoa 8y ago
  > Not all social media bots are malicious. And not all social media bots are posting content from low credibility sources. The collateral damage from banning them all may be worth it, if they're a major means for pushing low credibility content and disinformation.
  - robotresearcher 8y ago
    Eliminating all the internet bots would be the mundane real life first step of the Butlerian Jihad of the Dune universe. In the stories, they eliminate all machine computers in order to prevent AIs destroying society, and go back to human computers. The idea that AIs (broadly defined to include simple bots) are net more trouble than they are worth has been kicked around in literature forever. It’s fun to live in the age where we get to wrestle with it in practice.
- undreren 8y ago
  This is not an argument. Not all drunk drivers kill people either. A good argument must imply that social media bots are a net benefit to society and democracy, not that some good ones exist.
matt4077 8y ago
I believe "curbing" is simply a nod to the fact that the people/groups controlling these bots have no interest in turning them off, and are unlikely to change their opinion. The harms this article shows are, after all, their purpose. The actors who may be motivated to mitigate these harms, i. e. the social networks and possibly governments would face problems very similar to those with (other) spam, namely identification. Of course the history of spam filters makes me optimistic that it's feasible put a rather significant dent in the problem with even just modest efforts. Summary: It's more of a semantic difference, arguably more precise because there is no off switch as such.
- webwanderings 8y ago
  These people/companies are far and few actually, and they can decide to eliminate such mechanisms. The bots have used the lazy nature of humans to make a shortcut for economic advantage. It has uncontrollably spawned the culture of link baiting and downfall of truth and investigative journalism. Remember that humans first built the social sharing feature before bots showed up. Eliminate the bots and you’re only left with human social sharing on equal footing.
laretluval 8y ago
The bots would just get good at getting around the bot block. Are you sure you want to accelerate this arms race?
- asaph 8y ago
  > The bots would just get good at getting around the bot block. That's not what happened with email spam. The spammers lost the arms race.
  - geargrinder 8y ago
    Haha you really believe this? Everybody lost because of the misuse. The effectiveness of real emails is way down from 15 years ago. Obviously there are many factors, like multitudes of alternative services, but wading through tons of spam opened the door to those new options. The same fate probably awaits today's popular services. We will move on, they will die.
    - asaph 8y ago
      Yes. I really believe this. I still use email daily as do most (all?) people I know. It's a primary means of communication, especially when you need a digital "paper trail" of the communication. I remember email before Gmail. I used to delete hundreds of spam messages a day. It was torture. Not anymore. Now my inbox is all legit mail with vanishingly few spam messages. And my junk mail folder almost never has legit mail in it. For all intents and purposes the email spam problem is solved.
      - mijamo 8y ago
        TBH this is not my experience with Gmail. Some mails randomly get classed as spam for unknow reasons while many are missclassified ("promotion" whereas it was a direct message and "primary" for a lot of stupid promotional stuff"). And legit important mails ending in spam (mostly billing) is a huge problem for many companies I know. On the other side you can spam without issue and end up in the primary box when you switch servers and providers frequently enough and target a small amount of people (under 100 000).
makomk 8y ago
Good luck with that. It's buried in the supplemental materials, but mainstream media may be more reliant on social media bots to spread than the low-credibility stuff based on their data.

tree_of_item 8y ago

You cannot just "turn them off". What exactly are you going to do?

asaph 8y ago

Not all social media bots are malicious. And not all social media bots are posting content from low credibility sources.

eiaoa 8y ago
> Not all social media bots are malicious. And not all social media bots are posting content from low credibility sources. The collateral damage from banning them all may be worth it, if they're a major means for pushing low credibility content and disinformation.
- robotresearcher 8y ago
  Eliminating all the internet bots would be the mundane real life first step of the Butlerian Jihad of the Dune universe. In the stories, they eliminate all machine computers in order to prevent AIs destroying society, and go back to human computers. The idea that AIs (broadly defined to include simple bots) are net more trouble than they are worth has been kicked around in literature forever. It’s fun to live in the age where we get to wrestle with it in practice.
undreren 8y ago
This is not an argument. Not all drunk drivers kill people either. A good argument must imply that social media bots are a net benefit to society and democracy, not that some good ones exist.

matt4077 8y ago

I believe "curbing" is simply a nod to the fact that the people/groups controlling these bots have no interest in turning them off, and are unlikely to change their opinion. The harms this article shows are, after all, their purpose. The actors who may be motivated to mitigate these harms, i. e. the social networks and possibly governments would face problems very similar to those with (other) spam, namely identification. Of course the history of spam filters makes me optimistic that it's feasible put a rather significant dent in the problem with even just modest efforts. Summary: It's more of a semantic difference, arguably more precise because there is no off switch as such.

webwanderings 8y ago
These people/companies are far and few actually, and they can decide to eliminate such mechanisms. The bots have used the lazy nature of humans to make a shortcut for economic advantage. It has uncontrollably spawned the culture of link baiting and downfall of truth and investigative journalism. Remember that humans first built the social sharing feature before bots showed up. Eliminate the bots and you’re only left with human social sharing on equal footing.

laretluval 8y ago

The bots would just get good at getting around the bot block. Are you sure you want to accelerate this arms race?

asaph 8y ago
> The bots would just get good at getting around the bot block. That's not what happened with email spam. The spammers lost the arms race.
- geargrinder 8y ago
  Haha you really believe this? Everybody lost because of the misuse. The effectiveness of real emails is way down from 15 years ago. Obviously there are many factors, like multitudes of alternative services, but wading through tons of spam opened the door to those new options. The same fate probably awaits today's popular services. We will move on, they will die.
  - asaph 8y ago
    Yes. I really believe this. I still use email daily as do most (all?) people I know. It's a primary means of communication, especially when you need a digital "paper trail" of the communication. I remember email before Gmail. I used to delete hundreds of spam messages a day. It was torture. Not anymore. Now my inbox is all legit mail with vanishingly few spam messages. And my junk mail folder almost never has legit mail in it. For all intents and purposes the email spam problem is solved.
    - mijamo 8y ago
      TBH this is not my experience with Gmail. Some mails randomly get classed as spam for unknow reasons while many are missclassified ("promotion" whereas it was a direct message and "primary" for a lot of stupid promotional stuff"). And legit important mails ending in spam (mostly billing) is a huge problem for many companies I know. On the other side you can spam without issue and end up in the primary box when you switch servers and providers frequently enough and target a small amount of people (under 100 000).

makomk 8y ago

Good luck with that. It's buried in the supplemental materials, but mainstream media may be more reliant on social media bots to spread than the low-credibility stuff based on their data.