[oregontim]

Here's one bot that I like:

https://twitter.com/NYT_first_said

Basically, the bot tweets every time the New York Times publishes a word that has appeared in the Times for the first time.

For example, the most recent one was "freeballing" (no idea of the context).  It's not an ad.  It's not misinformation.  It's just a little side project that someone made that parses every edition of the NY Times and compares each word in it to a list of words that have appeared in the past, and if it's not in that list, will tweet out the new word.  My favorite from a few days ago was "doomscrolling", a nice portmanteau that describes a behavior a lot of us have engaged in, by going through social media looking for bad news.

Here's another bot:
https://twitter.com/infinite_scream

Basically, the bot responds automatically when tagged in a tweet with an "AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH".  That's basically all it does.  Again, it's not an ad.  It's not misinformation.

BC

Agreed. Scripts are bots and bots are scripts, small pieces of code, not necessarily evil, not the real problem. I use bots myself to post my blog posts to Twitter and LinkedIn automatically.

The problem that started this thread is that bots are being used to create what feels to most of the world as public opinion. Bots disguised as normal humans. And the specific Covid-19-relevant research that turned up last week, millions of bots sent into social media to mess with our collective heads related to SIP and masks and such. It's like a lynch mob shouting outside the jail, in which most of the people are cardboard cutouts and just a view voices are amplified to scare the hell out of the sheriff.

I don't have a solution. I agree with what GR pointed out earlier in this thread, that every solution ends up with somebody deciding, which is too much power. Think about what happened to DOJ, EPA, etc. since 2017. Seems like Facebook and Twitter could label or even color everything coming from a bot — but that would really cut into their revenue, by reducing the incentives to pay them. Difficult times.

[oregontim]

Here's one bot that I like:

https://twitter.com/NYT_first_said

Basically, the bot tweets every time the New York Times publishes a word that has appeared in the Times for the first time.

For example, the most recent one was "freeballing" (no idea of the context).  It's not an ad.  It's not misinformation.  It's just a little side project that someone made that parses every edition of the NY Times and compares each word in it to a list of words that have appeared in the past, and if it's not in that list, will tweet out the new word.  My favorite from a few days ago was "doomscrolling", a nice portmanteau that describes a behavior a lot of us have engaged in, by going through social media looking for bad news.

Here's another bot:
https://twitter.com/infinite_scream

Basically, the bot responds automatically when tagged in a tweet with an "AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH".  That's basically all it does.  Again, it's not an ad.  It's not misinformation.

BC

Agreed. Scripts are bots and bots are scripts, small pieces of code, not necessarily evil, not the real problem. I use bots myself to post my blog posts to Twitter and LinkedIn automatically.

The problem that started this thread is that bots are being used to create what feels to most of the world as public opinion. Bots disguised as normal humans. And the specific Covid-19-relevant research that turned up last week, millions of bots sent into social media to mess with our collective heads related to SIP and masks and such. It's like a lynch mob shouting outside the jail, in which most of the people are cardboard cutouts and just a view voices are amplified to scare the hell out of the sheriff.

I don't have a solution. I agree with what GR pointed out earlier in this thread, that every solution ends up with somebody deciding, which is too much power. Think about what happened to DOJ, EPA, etc. since 2017. Seems like Facebook and Twitter could label or even color everything coming from a bot — but that would really cut into their revenue, by reducing the incentives to pay them. Difficult times.