Bots, Botnets, Trolls
Cyberspace is becoming an ever more complicated place. While it has offered us invaluable tools to communicate around the world, it has also offered a unique set of problems that are particularly troubling for journalists. A few of these problems include bots, botnets, and trolling: threats that produce misinformation, sometimes automatically, at frightening speeds. Often, these bots will also be masquerading as people.
WHAT’S A BOT?
A bot is a social media account that is not run by a person, but some sort of algorithm. For example, several artists realized that bot accounts were often stealing their work without credit and offering that artwork for sale on T-shirts, so they entrapped the bot into taking credit for thievery. These bots would appear as soon as someone commented,” I want this on a shirt” – or something to that effect – as soon as any art piece was posted. Bots are usually trained to respond en masse to text triggers, hashtags, or users.
Not all bots are worth attention; some simply exist to post factoids on a daily basis to a company Twitter, or to generate odd bits of art for no reason. But some bots are specifically malicious – even politically partisan. The factors to look for in a bot are high activity levels, anonymity, and targeted amplification. In other words, if this “person” is never posting about themselves, interacting with other individuals on an individual basis, and seeming to target one particular cause ad nauseum, they are likely a bot.
WHAT ARE BOTNETS?
Botnets are groups of bots that are basically centered around the same activity. Botnets usually exist to amplify the already-amplified voice of other bots. For example, if an account with only two posts has over 110 - 150 likes and shares, it’s likely the result of a botnet responding to its triggers. Botnets are usually larger, though–averaging over 12,000 engagement points. Botnets will post the same content throughout the net and engage with each other in almost the exact same ways. If you see two suspected accounts that have posted the same content, chances are they are part of the same botnet.
TROLLS vs. BOTS, BOTNETS
Trolls are a little easier to spot because they are subject to human fallibility. A troll is a person who (seemingly) has made it their personal mission to make your life harder. Officially, trolls initiate online conflict by posting inflammatory content. Trolls and bots do not follow the same patterns. For example, bots use the same patterns of speech regardless of a situation, and trolls can adapt.
HOW TO TELL WHICH ONE YOU”RE DEALING WITH
The proof is in the pudding, so to speak, when it comes to bots and botnets. Bots have a number of tells in their visible accounts that can easily expose them, if you know what to look for.
Account username patterns: One user was able to identify a botnet used to influence Malaysian elections by noting a common numerical pattern at the end of each bot’s username.
Account creation time: If several different anonymous accounts were created on the same day, time, and location–it’s likely a botnet. Location is an especially helpful tool at tracking down botnets, as they are often used to amplify a political event in the location they are exploiting.
Triggers: Accounts that post in half a second after the utterance of a certain phrase – such as the “I want this on a shirt” bots – are bots. Humans can’t type that fast.
Identical content: bots are not versatile and can really only do one thing really well, and that shortcoming is often capitalized to spread misinformation or inflammatory content at dizzying speeds. If something has been reposted by several different accounts and heavily engaged with, and there are little-to-no differences between each post and the amount of engagement, those are all signs of bots at work.
Figuring out how to spot these bots can really clear out some of the congestion of information on the internet to help make your reporting more concise and more truthful. While we continue to navigate the newness of the information age, having these tools in your back pocket could save you a lot of time and frustration.
