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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsSocialbots being designed to sway elections, influence stock market, attack governments
Researchers say this new breed of bots is being designed not just with greater sophistication but also with grander goals: to sway elections, to influence the stock market, to attack governments, even to flirt with people and one another.Socialbots are being circulated around the Web for many purposes. To irritate his adversaries, a software developer from Australia designed a bot that automatically responds to tweets from climate change deniers, sending them counterarguments and links to studies debunking their claims. A security engineer in California programed a bot to scoop up reservations for State Bird Provisions, a trendy restaurant in San Francisco. Mercenary armies of bots can be bought on the Web for as little as $250.
Other bots have more underhanded ambitions. Last year, officials from Mexicos governing Institutional Revolutionary Party were accused of using bots to sabotage the partys critics by appropriating some of their hashtags and flooding Twitter with identical posts, designed to trip Twitters spam filter. Believing the posts to be spam, Twitter soon began blocking those hashtags entirely, temporarily silencing the critics, which was exactly what the government officials intended.
During a dispute over a Russian parliamentary election in 2011, thousands of Twitter bots, created months before but largely dormant, suddenly began posting hundreds of messages a day targeting anti-Kremlin activists, aiming to drown them out, according to security analysts. Researchers say similar tactics have been used more recently by the government in Syria.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/11/sunday-review/i-flirt-and-tweet-follow-me-at-socialbot.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0
arely staircase
(12,482 posts)"During a dispute over a Russian parliamentary election in 2011, thousands of Twitter bots, created months before but largely dormant, suddenly began posting hundreds of messages a day targeting anti-Kremlin activists, aiming to drown them out, according to security analysts"
leveymg
(36,418 posts)What ya think a bot that?
nashville_brook
(20,958 posts)LongTomH
(8,636 posts)octoberlib
(14,971 posts)Last month the Nation posted an article on NC's horrible new voting laws. I got to the article right after it had been posted and the comments section was already filled with post after post extolling the virtues of voter id. I figured they were paid trolls.
nyquil_man
(1,443 posts)I assumed it was due to their having only one brain among them.
Katashi_itto
(10,175 posts)backscatter712
(26,355 posts)Katashi_itto
(10,175 posts)Pity we don't have Turing agents...
PowerToThePeople
(9,610 posts)mick063
(2,424 posts)I will fight for that bot's right to be recognized as a sentient being.
backscatter712
(26,355 posts)but didn't you know, there's no such thing as shills, psy-ops or propaganda-bots on DU.
Why every username has a unique human face behind it, and every person who logs onto Democratic Underground posts in good faith!
arely staircase
(12,482 posts)According to Skinner:
This whole who-is-the-paid-shill witch hunt is disruptive nonsense.
It betrays an utter lack of creativity on the part of the people making the accusation. They are so convinced that they are right that they cannot imagine someone else might hold a different point of view in good faith. Either that or they are incapable of advocating for their own point of view on the merits. -
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1259&pid=2716
so disrupt away.
Scuba
(53,475 posts)arely staircase
(12,482 posts)BumRushDaShow
(127,305 posts)If you throw a rock in a pig pen, the one that squeals is the one that got hit.