How Social Bots are ruining the internet
Social bots are computer programs that use fake profiles to spread masses of pre-written posts on social media. This often involves misinformation.
There is now talk of a “bot epidemic” on Twitter. A quarter of all tweets on climate change and half of all Twitter profiles that comment on Corona are said to be controlled by bots.
One of the ways these bots can be identified is that they often just forward content instead of making posts themselves. But a new AI-based software could soon change that.
The GPT-3 program calculates word sequences based on their probability. For example, it can create songs or propaganda tweets from given words.
Although AI bots can hardly keep up in real discourse, IT security expert Bruce Schneier believes that many forums will soon be dominated by bots debating with other bots.
Lening once said: “A lie told often enough becomes the truth”.
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What are the dangers when bots flood the Internet with propaganda?
During the 2016 U.S. election campaign, thousands of Russian chat-bots allegedly simulated user accounts and used them to spread political messages en mass on the Twitter these “social bots” were intended to manipulate the election by distorting public opinion.
In an age of modern propaganda, however, the amount of disinformation is definitely concerning. This is not about convincing the mass of an opinion but rather bombarding it with so much untruth that the will to distinguish between true and false is lost through exhaustion. This creates a perfect starting situation for populists.
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How social bots are ruining the internet was originally published in Chatbots Life on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.