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Concept
Social bot
Summary
A social bot, or also described as a social AI or social algorithm, is a software agent that communicates autonomously on social media. The messages (e.g. tweets) it distributes can be simple and operate in groups and various configurations with partial human control (hybrid) via algorithm. Social bots can also use artificial intelligence and machine learning to express messages in more natural human dialogue.
To influence peoples decisions, e.g.: advertise a product, support a political campaign, increase engagement statistics for social media pages, etc.
To provide low cost customer service agent to answer questions that their users might have.
To automatically answer commonly asked questions on Social media such as Discord.
Lutz Finger identifies five immediate uses for social bots:
foster fame: having an arbitrary number of (unrevealed) bots as (fake) followers can help simulate real success.
spamming: having advertising bots in online chats is similar to email spam, but a lot more direct.
mischief: e.g. signing up an opponent with a lot of fake identities and spam the account or help others discover it to discredit the opponent.
public opinion bias: influence trends by countless messages of similar content with different phrasings.
limit free speech: important messages can be pushed out of sight by a deluge of automated bot messages.
to phish passwords or other personal data.
Some of another examples, such as:
Algorithmic radicalization: drive users toward progressively more extreme content over time, leading to them developing radicalized extremist political views, often generate and polarized endless media aimed to keep users engaged through preferences in media and self-confirmation.
Influence-for-hire: refers to the economy that has emerged around buying and selling influence on social media platforms.
Ghost followers: are users on social media platforms who remain inactive or do not engage in activity, but do not partake in liking, commenting, messaging, and posting.
Official source
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