4 ms·

I’m not sure if you’ve read the article or not but a lot of what you’ve posted seems to miss the point of it (and thus my post too). Eg > Item 4 already happen

I’m not sure if you’ve read the article or not but a lot of what you’ve posted seems to miss the point of it (and thus my post too). Eg > Item 4 already happens on a large scale, The article states that some people are skeptical about whether to trust tweets because they don’t know whether it’s a bot or not. My post was expanding off that premise saying an optional label doesn’t solve that problem, it makes it worse. > The behavior of concern here is Twitter accounts operating in service of somebody or something else, which might or might not be operated by a human, script, AI, or what have you. The article puts puppet accounts under the same umbrella as “bots”. My post was continuing on from that premise. > A more accurate term might be 'agent', Maybe, but arguing semantics completely misses the point of the discussion. > which also describes the day jobs of some of the people working on Twitter as their primary job :) We aren’t talking about people who work for Pizza Hut managing their Twitter presence. We are talking about large scale use of accounts pretending to be an average Joe but who are controlled by a single entity as part of a larger misinformation campaign. It might be a human who posts the messages but the person controlling those accounts aren’t the same as the accounts report themselves as and neither is there a 1:1 relationship between account and human. Calling them an “agent” legitimises it as if it’s people representing an organisation but it’s not, it’s effective still a network of bots except you’ve replaced software with “fleshware”. I mean sure, if you want a different term to make the distinction then I have no issue with that. But the point of the discussion isn’t what do we name these types of accounts, it’s how do we make readers aware of when they’re reading an opinion vs an undercover piece of promotion. It’s kinds of similar to when some jurisdictions mandate that paid promotions need to be labelled as an advert rather than a review.

Applejinx 5y ago
I think we agree more than we disagree, here :) I've got no quarrel with anything you've said, except: item 4. In the parent post, your exact criticism was: user reads info, user checks to see if it's labeled 'Officially A Bot', user does NOT find that label, and then item 4, user trusts info that harms them. I'm sorry, I have a darker view of all this. The whole point is to push info (whether it's secret paid product promotion, political propaganda, or literal advocacy of genocide) into normalized social discussions and past any initial network of bots, and the whole point is that it's unreasonably effective on social networks where strangers can seem like 'friends'. Obvious bots vs. surreptitious or human-controlled 'bots' is an almost meaningless distinction here. Also, you're correct in that 'agent' can be like a corporate 'registered agent' but also can imply 'secret agent', as in hostile foreign spy who doesn't have your best interests at heart. An intelligent operative trying to hurt you, not simply a 'robot' with no interests at all. We're talking about and agreeing on all the same things. I'm saying the real key to managing the damage of this is not 'label things a bot', the real key is to broadly communicate the idea, 'this whole platform is trying to maximize social contagion and make you feel like large numbers of strangers are your trusted personal friends'. And they're not, they're really, really not.

Applejinx 5y ago

I think we agree more than we disagree, here :) I've got no quarrel with anything you've said, except: item 4. In the parent post, your exact criticism was: user reads info, user checks to see if it's labeled 'Officially A Bot', user does NOT find that label, and then item 4, user trusts info that harms them. I'm sorry, I have a darker view of all this. The whole point is to push info (whether it's secret paid product promotion, political propaganda, or literal advocacy of genocide) into normalized social discussions and past any initial network of bots, and the whole point is that it's unreasonably effective on social networks where strangers can seem like 'friends'. Obvious bots vs. surreptitious or human-controlled 'bots' is an almost meaningless distinction here. Also, you're correct in that 'agent' can be like a corporate 'registered agent' but also can imply 'secret agent', as in hostile foreign spy who doesn't have your best interests at heart. An intelligent operative trying to hurt you, not simply a 'robot' with no interests at all. We're talking about and agreeing on all the same things. I'm saying the real key to managing the damage of this is not 'label things a bot', the real key is to broadly communicate the idea, 'this whole platform is trying to maximize social contagion and make you feel like large numbers of strangers are your trusted personal friends'. And they're not, they're really, really not.