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?
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There are many different kinds of bots, some nefarious, some helpful. Search engines wouldn’t work without bots regularly combing all the catacombs of the internet. Other bots are relatively harmless, such as automated responses here on Reddit. But bots are also used in information warfare, including here. It’s hard to get an accurate idea of how big or small that is, partly because governments and other agencies try to hide what they’re doing.
The one study that came to mind is that Australian researchers found that in the first month of the Ukraine war, 90% of tweets on the war were done by bots. I try to be aware and it’s so hard to know just how much that affected me.
I would say that harmful/manipulative bots can be a big deal and we should be concerned about them.
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