Examples of Bots (or apps)
Contents
3.2. Examples of Bots (or apps)#
There are many types of bots in the social media world. Here are some examples of different bots:
3.2.1. Friendly bots:#
Some bots are intended to be helpful, using automation to make tasks easier for others or to provide information, such as:
Auto caption: https://twitter.com/headlinerclip
Vaccine progress: https://twitter.com/vax_progress
Blocking groups of people: https://twitter.com/blockpartyapp_
Social Media managing programs that help people schedule and coordinate posts
Delete old tweets: https://tweetdelete.net/
See a new photo of a red panda every hour: https://twitter.com/RedPandaEveryHr
Bots might have significant limits on how helpful they are, such as tech support bots you might have had frustrating experiences with on various websites.
3.2.2. Malicious bots:#
On the other hand, some bots are created with the intentions of harming or deceiving others. For example, people use bots to spam advertizments, or harass others. You can use bots as a way of buying fake followiers, or making fake crowds that appear to support a cause (called Astroturfing).
As one example, in 2016, Rian Johnson, who was in the middle of directing Star Wars: The Last Jedi, got bombarded by tweets that all originated in Russia (likely making at least some use of bots).
“I’ve gotten a rush of tweets – coordinated tweets. Like, somewhere else on the internet there’s like a group on the internet saying, ‘Okay, everyone tweet Rian Johnson.’ All from Russian accounts, and all begging me not to kill Admiral Hux in this movie.”
From: https://www.imdb.com/video/vi3962091545 (start at 7:49)
After the Star Wars: Last Jedi was released, there was a significant online backlash. When a researcher looked into it:
[Morten] Bay found that 50.9% of people tweeting negatively about “The Last Jedi” were “politically motivated or not even human,” with a number of these users appearing to be Russian trolls. The overall backlash against the film wasn’t even that great, with only 21.9% of tweets analyzed about the movie being negative in the first place.
3.2.3. Corrupted bots#
As a final example, we wanted to tell you about Microsoft Tay a bot that got corrupted.
In 2016, Microsft launched a twitter bot that was intended to learn to speak from other twitter users and have conversations. Twitter users quickly started tweeting racist comments at Tay, which Tay learned from and started tweeting out within one day.
Read more about what went wrong from Vice How to Make a Bot That Isn’t Racist