Are they just set up by people/companies to rack up extra followers or is there some other reason for them?
In: 8
Bots exist to influence people. People will accept hearsay as fact if they hear enough people repeat it. Bots appear to be people that accept something; so others follow.
They can make people appear more popular than they actually are (more followers, more mentions); people will pay attention to others that they believe to be popular / influential (and a person can become actually popular or influential just by convincing people they are). It can be used to creat “influencers”, and give a voice to those wouldn’t normal have such a platform.
Bots can take unpopular opinions and make them popular. They can make it seem as though many people have a particular opinion or point of view by pretending to be such people. Real people feel pee pressure to share the opinion, or at least accept that it’s widely held by others. People that already held that opinion, but felt that they could not express it can be made to feel that it’s widely accepted and are then emboldened to express it and act on it. It’s been used to make bigotries, violence, and extremism more mainstream.
Bots can be used to disseminate information, particularly wrong or inaccurate information. This could be used to sow doubt, influence policy, defame people, prepare people to accept other falsehoods, etc. There are entire networks devoted to using bots to sell conspiracies and “alternate facts” to receptive demographics with the objective of undermining foreign governments.
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