The spread of low-credibility content by social bots

Re:The spread of low-credibility content by social bots by matt4077 on Tuesday November 20, 2018 @06:52PM (#18498990)

I believe "curbing" is simply a nod to the fact that the people/groups controlling these bots have no interest in turning them off, and are unlikely to change their opinion. The harms this article shows are, after all, their purpose.

The actors who may be motivated to mitigate these harms, i. e. the social networks and possibly governments would face problems very similar to those with (other) spam, namely identification. Of course the history of spam filters makes me optimistic that it's feasible put a rather significant dent in the problem with even just modest efforts.

Summary: It's more of a semantic difference, arguably more precise because there is no off switch as such.

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Re:The spread of low-credibility content by social bots by webwanderings on Tuesday November 20, 2018 @07:20PM (#18499144)

These people/companies are far and few actually, and they can decide to eliminate such mechanisms. The bots have used the lazy nature of humans to make a shortcut for economic advantage. It has uncontrollably spawned the culture of link baiting and downfall of truth and investigative journalism. Remember that humans first built the social sharing feature before bots showed up. Eliminate the bots and you’re only left with human social sharing on equal footing.

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