Our cooperation partner at Saferinternet.at has written an article on the topic: “Social Bots – When the computer has an opinion”, which we would like to reproduce here.

The possible uses of social bots are very diverse, sometimes helpful, and several hundred new chatbots are added every day. Programs that use social media accounts to pretend to be people in order to influence political debates or solve our everyday problems. It sounds like a distant future scenario, but it has already become commonplace, sometimes without us even realizing it. We explain what exactly a bot is and how you can recognize it.

What are bots?

Bots are autonomous computer programs that carry out predefined tasks independently and repeat them endlessly. Social bots pretend to be humans through social media accounts and are able to communicate with other users, be it on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. This interaction gives the social network's algorithm the impression that a certain topic is particularly relevant and thus pushes it into the users' feeds. But dating or service sites run by companies (e.g. airlines) are already relying heavily on bots to make communication with users more efficient. It is often not apparent to users that they are communicating with a bot.

Social bots make politics and create their own trends

What is new and still little researched is the way propaganda bots work . They specifically participate in public debates and steer discussions in a specific direction with their contributions . On Twitter, for example, in Germany it is enough for 10,000 people to write about a topic for it to appear in Twitter trends . And suddenly it seems as if a lot of real people are talking about a real topic, even though it was actually only created artificially by small computer programs. In individual cases, they even communicate directly with other users without them being aware of the artificial nature of their conversation partner .

The chatbots help the user

However, social bots are not just used to amplify opinions. Chatbots can also support users with everyday challenges : Many chatbots are offered by official company websites and are immediately recognizable as such . In popular chat programs such as Facebook Messenger, for example, they remind people of their appointments ( Hello Jarvis ), display the ORF Teletext ( Teletext.bot ) or help them find their way around Vienna ( Wienbot ). For example, you can write on WhatsApp using the German Federal Employment Agency's WhatsmeBot The possible uses are very diverse, sometimes helpful, and several hundred new chatbots are added every day.

This is how I recognize social bots

First of all, recognizing a social bot is not easy and not always 100% safe . Especially since their developers have learned to disguise them better and better.

What does the profile description reveal?
Try to find out how long the social media account has been around. An indication of a social bot could be that the account was created relatively recently and uses a very generic account description. On networks like Twitter, you can also look for whether the account has been verified with a blue checkmark, meaning it is a “real” and verified account.

How often does the account write?
Together with the age of the account, this can be another indication if it has written a lot of messages in a very short period of time. Social bots try to push certain topics by writing as many messages as possible.

How quickly does the account respond?
Since they are computer programs, social bots usually react in a fraction of a second. Be careful when writing to the account.

How does the account respond to contextual questions?
Try to ask questions that not only address the topic at hand, but also place it in a larger context, such as: “What larger issues can I see when I take a step back?” Most social bots fail in more complex contexts.

The online tool Bot or Not? The American Indiana University can use data from a Twitter profile to say how likely it is that there is no human behind Twitter account XY but rather a computer program . Under the name Botswatch, a group of journalists, web developers and digital strategists have also come together to uncover the involvement of social bots in political debates on social media.

My entertainment in someone else's hands

The information that users reveal in the course of this conversation is of course not private but can be viewed by anyone who has access to the bot. This is particularly important to pay attention to if, for example, you supposedly private conversations in a messenger and data such as travel plans or an email address .

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Notes:
1) This content reflects the current state of affairs at the time of publication. The reproduction of individual images, screenshots, embeds or video sequences serves to discuss the topic. 2) Individual contributions were created through the use of machine assistance and were carefully checked by the Mimikama editorial team before publication. ( Reason )