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: u

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.