Thread. Add to read list
Can't help but wonder whether hypothesis holds up better if one defines social bots broadly enough to include software bots & humans engineered to behave indistinguishably from software bots #ReEngHum
I'm not defending the 50 tweets/day = bot thresholdhttps://twitter.com/MichaelKreil/status/1221785812150423552 …
-
Bots, as awful as they are, reproduce the status quo—at scale. In the olden days of Digg, for instance, brands with $$ would hire people to downvote competitors. Today, brands and organizations alike use similar tactics for "online reputation management." O tempora o mores!
Bots are the personified irony of "social" proof. In the days of one-to-many broadcasting, entities with $ would use TV and expensive publicity campaigns to shape public opinion. And while that is still an existing practice, we also have fake "social proof," to make things worse.
