Social media bots behind viral fake news campaigns are fooling voters: HALF of Americans say they can’t tell the difference between posts from an AI and a human
- Since the 2016 US election Americans have been concerned about fake news
- 80 percent of the people surveyed said bot accounts are used for bad purposes
- Majority are concerned that bot accounts are being used maliciously
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Automated social media accounts are duping American’s into believing they are real, according to new research.
More than half of a US survey of 4,500 people said they can’t tell the difference between posts from a social media bot and a human.
Just two thirds had heard of the AI-driven bots, which have been deployed multiple times by malicious forces aiming to influence western elections.
The study suggests that most Americans are unprepared for fake news campaigns that are poised to flood social media sites during the upcoming US midterms.
Researchers found earlier this month that 80 per cent of Twitter accounts blamed for spreading fake news during the 2016 US election are still active today.
Many American’s surveyed by Pew Research Center have said they can’t tell the difference between a human and a bot (stock image)
After surveying more than 4,500 adults in the US, researchers at the Pew Centre in Washington, DC, found that most people think the bots are up to no good.
Eight in ten of those surveyed said the accounts are used for ‘bad purposes’, while just 17 per cent said they are used for good purposes.
Among those aware of the phenomenon, the majority were concerned that bot accounts are being used maliciously.
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HOW DO TWITTER’S BIGGEST ACCOUNTS ACT LIKE BOTS?
Researchers discovered bots retweet and post links to external sites more often than non-bot accounts.
They also see less engagement on their tweets.
Bots tweet more often, yet they spend less time ‘liking’ others’ tweets.
They revealed the behavior of users with 10 million followers or more was more in line with bots than humans.
These accounts tweet at roughly the same pace as bots with similar follower numbers and, like bots, tweet more in general.
They rely on retweeting and posting links to external sites more than human accounts.
Their tweets are also of lower quality and see less engagement.
Two-thirds (66 percent) think social media bots have a mostly negative effect on how well-informed Americans are about current events, while (11 percent) believe they have a mostly positive effect.
The younger generation seemed to be more knowledgeable when it came to bots. However, since the survey results are self-reported, there’s a chance people are overstating or understating their knowledge of bots.
Despite this, most people regarded these bots as bad. It was clear that the more knowledgeable a person became about social media bots the less supportive they became of their use.
And the more that a person knows about social media bots, the less supportive they are of bots.
While researchers work tirelessly to combats bots, the report gives the sense that most Americans are worried and can’t do much to identify them.
A recent measure, proposed by MIT Sloan academics is an algorithm that would distinguish bots from humans based on how they interact with other accounts.
The research suggested that many Americans are worried that they don’t have the understanding to combat bots
The general idea is that if an account is very active and others aren’t talking to it, it could be a bot.
Associate professor of operations management at MIT Sloan, Tauhid Zaman said this new method is well suited for modern-day bot detection.
‘You collect all sorts of information about the account and this tells you if it’s a bot.’
‘Humans talk to humans, bots talk to humans, and nobody talks to bots.
‘So if you have a lot of active people who aren’t talking to each other, and other people aren’t talking to them, then you’re probably looking at bots,’ he added.
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