Bots And Trolls Are Affecting Our Society

If you’re a frequent social media user, you’re probably already very familiar with fake users, fake accounts, trolls and bots. They are everywhere on social media, but we all know they can be harmful, so why are they still so common?

Let’s first have a glance at some numbers and statistics. It was calculated that 15% or 48 million of Twitter accounts were automated (Newberg, 2017). What about Facebook? Well, it disclosed that an estimated 60 million Facebook accounts may be automated. I don’t know about you, but that sounds like a lot to me.

A bot is essentially an automated program that runs over the internet (TechTerms, 2014). They are very common and they can bring harm. There are 3 ways bots can bring harm Lever (2019).

1. Bots amplify the popularity or dislike of a movement or person, causing a distortion in users’ views of true public sentiment.
2. Bots spread misinformation or in more modern terminology, Fake News.
3. Bots manipulate conversations which creates groups and bridge groups.

Trolls are also very common. A troll is basically someone who purposely says something controversial in order to get a rise out of other users (Hanson, 2018). Often times trolls can simply be ignored as they don’t affect you in any significant way. However in more serious cases, trolls can damage one’s reputation and image by intentionally misrepresenting their point. (Rose, 2017).

Bots and trolls are very common but we must give credit to social media giants for tackling this issue. Facebook has blocked three billion fake accounts and they are even willing to go as far as deleting real accounts if they suspect them (Lever, 2019). Trolls can be reported, and with enough reports, their accounts will be banned. The problem is, they will keep coming! Social media giants are doing their best to mitigate the number of bots and get rid of trolls but they just can’t keep up with all of them.

Zuckerberg mentioned that a lot of the harmful content and misinformation, are commercially motivated (Lever, 2019). Some bots aren’t run automatically, they execute commands when they receive specific inputs (TechTerms, 2014). Let’s translate this into a marketer and consumer scenario. A marketer can use bots to misinform an audience about their competitors, which will turn the customers away from them and to you. Similarly, trolls can tarnish your competitors’ reputation.

Great, now you have acquired more customers but was this process ethical? Absolutely not. In the short run, a marketer can attack its competitors with bots and trolls and acquire more customers. In the long run however, if the truth gets disclosed, you can say adios to your business.

It’s clear that the Internet and social media can be a haunting place and the presence of bots and trolls just make matters worse. Jaron Lanier addresses this issue in his Ted talk. He explains that the internet was designed to be free for all but what if that was the cause of these problems? What if we had to pay for social networks? That would go against its initial purpose right? Yes, but look at Netflix for example, you need to pay for that, but they’re doing great. If we paid for all our social networks, we might not get spammed anymore. Entities will have to pay to create bots and I don’t think anyone would pay subscription fees just to troll. Maybe it’s time for the internet to reconsider its ways.

Bots and trolls are omnipresent and they can cause a lot of harm. Social media giants such as Facebook do their best to combat their existence but they can’t eliminate them all. Maybe the internet creators are responsible for all this by allowing social networks to be free. However, the origin of the problem may come from something else. Despite the efforts of reducing the impact that bots and trolls cause, new solutions and systems must arise to fully eliminate this problem.