bot or not?

[Stephanie]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/16/scie ... azemi.html

An interesting article about whether bots are influencing discussions on covid. One guy they interview is pretty sceptical:

He also found that humans were often mistaken for bots. Consider the “grandpa effect,” as he called it: people who were mistaken for bots because they used social media in “uncool or gauche” ways, he said. Users fond of hitting the share button on news articles also resulted in false positives. This led Mr. Kazemi to wonder whether Botometer should be renamed “Normiemeter.” He tweeted: “Can you imagine the headlines? ‘50% of accounts tweeting about Covid are normies.’”

[JQH]

If being uncool gets you categorised as a bot then I'm f.cked.

[Bird on a Fire]

I know that there are bots online. But I also see a lot of cases where people dismiss others instantly as bots, or Russians, or paid shills of some sort, when in all probability most of them are just people with different opinions.

OTOH opinions these days are formed to a great extent, and it's easy to see how black-box proprietary algorithms are perfect for exploitation in this way.

So I suspect that things like follower numbers, likes and retweets are all rampantly manipulated, but actual commenters will tend to be real people.

I'm a robot, though.

[Bird on a Fire]

If being uncool gets you categorised as a bot then I'm f.cked.

I think all the posters whose names are just a bunch of letters are probably bots. Especially jdc.

You seem pretty cool, though, JQH. At least for a droid.

[bjn]

If being uncool gets you categorised as a bot then I'm f.cked.

I think all the posters whose names are just a bunch of letters are probably bots. Especially jdc.

You seem pretty cool, though, JQH. At least for a droid.

Rumbled.

[bolo]

I think all the posters whose names are just a bunch of letters are probably bots.

How many is a bunch?

Oh wait we did that one.

[JQH]

If being uncool gets you categorised as a bot then I'm f.cked.

I think all the posters whose names are just a bunch of letters are probably bots. Especially jdc.

You seem pretty cool, though, JQH. At least for a droid.

I am not the droid you are looking for.

[Stephanie]

I know that there are bots online. But I also see a lot of cases where people dismiss others instantly as bots, or Russians, or paid shills of some sort, when in all probability most of them are just people with different opinions.

OTOH opinions these days are formed to a great extent, and it's easy to see how black-box proprietary algorithms are perfect for exploitation in this way.

So I suspect that things like follower numbers, likes and retweets are all rampantly manipulated, but actual commenters will tend to be real people.

I'm a robot, though.

a lot of people are quick to think someone disagreeing with them is a bot. It's the new trolling innit.