Bots spreading misinformation are using more sophisticated techniques, like going after specific human influencers and targeting misleading information within the first few seconds of it being posted, Axios' Sara Fischer reports.
- Why it matters: New studies suggest that bots are getting more adept at gaming social platforms, even as the platforms are making changes to weed them out. Bots are also getting better at avoiding detection.
- Be smart: This is the future Elon Musk warned us about Sunday on "Axios on HBO."
After the 2016 election, researchers tried to understand the role bots played in spreading misinformation. What they found is that bots have been steps ahead of gaming the web for some time — in particular, social platforms like Twitter and Facebook — using a few key tactics:
- Focus on speed: The spread of low-credibility content by social bots happens very quickly, according to a new study from Indiana University published in Nature Magazine.
- Using specific targets: Bots increase exposure to negative and inflammatory content on social media in part by targeting specific people, according to a new study from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
- Elevating human content: Bots aim to exploit human-generated content, because it is more prone to polarization, according to the PNAS study.
- Targeting original posts, not replies: Bots spread low-credibility content that is created through an initial tweet or posting, according to the Nature study.
- Gaming metadata: Bots are using more metadata to mimic human behavior and thus avoid detection, according to a new study from Data & Society, which receives funding from Microsoft. As platforms get better at detecting inauthentic activity, bots are using metadata — photo captions, followers, comments, etc. — to make their posts seem more human-like.
The bigger picture: Most Americans say they can't distinguish bots from humans on social media, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey.
- What's next? Social platforms have been trying to reduce the content-elevating signals that are easily gamed by bots. Twitter, for example, has made follower counts appear less prominent on its iOS app by making the font size smaller in a new redesign effort, per The Verge.