Are the “50% of Internet Traffic is Bots” Headlines True and if so How Big a Deal is it?

Question

I ask because it seems like it would be really bad but I don’t see much talk about it. I do, however, see talk about anonymity being banned from the internet and it being a bad idea. Would a social media site or other such sites be rid of a bot problem by making users ID themselves?

In: 15

Answer 1

So there’s a few facets to this.

The term internet traffic is important here. It is not saying 50% of what you see on the internet is from bots. It’s that 50% of internet consumption is from bots.

Web scrapers, research spiders, crawlers (a la Google or Bing bots), engagement bots, social media astroturfing, and good old fashioned fraud, would all fall under the umbrella of bot behavior.

Some of these usecases are nefarious, most are harmless, and many fall somewhere in-between as a bit sketchy but ultimately “fine”.

One thing to keep in mind is just because it’s a bot, does not mean it’s bad. In line with that, certain people want certain types of bots, and other people don’t want those same bots for different reasons.

Let’s run through a scenario here, an extremely common scenario in the world of online advertising.

——-
Someone has a click bot, it visits websites and clicks on things to see where they go. This particular bot, for one reason or another, does not identify itself (to get a more “legitimate” experience), but also does not discriminate on links, so it will click on ads.

This bot visits YouTube, and clicks on an ad in the sidebar. It redirects out, making it through some basic filtering from the ad unit, and lands on the advertisers page, let’s say it’s Ford.

Now, let’s break down who wants that not to not exist.

Very clearly, Ford doesn’t want that bot. Bots don’t buy trucks. However, does Ford know they were a bot? Google sold it to them, telling them that it wasn’t. Google’s job is supposed to be to catch these things, that’s why you advertise on Google. The other reason you advertise on Google is they have the largest reach, but guess what number is included in that reach.

And hereinlies the problem. We have many people with mixed motivations.

So, we have bots everywhere.

Edit* crap, this was on eli5. Uh, sorry