Uncovering Instagram Bots With a New Kind of Detective Work

They are not hard to find on Facebook either. I also read the Washington Post, and you can spot the bots, then start looking them up, and all of there Facebook pages look alike. The pictures are fake; the names are real names, but they are not the same people. Also, a popular source for names is old novels.

So, are all the bots now generating content and following each other? Can we humans just tip toe quietly out of the room and leave the bots to it?

The bot problem in social media is just another version of the spam problem for email, which was largely solved because there was an incentive to solve it (companies were being paid by account, and people stopped using their accounts if there was too much spam). But because the incentives are different for social media (companies being paid by impression/view/click), there is little incentive to solve the problem, which makes all social media turn into Ashley Madison (mostly fake). You need a social media platform with a different payment model, which produces different incentives.

What's the difference between marketing and social media? Nothing. Both are in the business of selling something or someone.

An idol on instagram boasts that ev'ryone follows his posts. But research has shown It’s all done by drone -- His numbers are nothing but ghosts

With AI fully integrated, “smart” bots might become totally undetectable

Why is anyone surprised? Oh, right, people have been sold a bill of goods that "virtual reality" is not an oxymoron. Kind of like "secure internet", "fake news", and "alternative facts."

Why is anyone surprised? Oh, right, people have been sold a bill of goods that "virtual reality" is not an oxymoron. Kind of like "secure internet", "fake news", and "alternative facts."

Wow, this is a naïve article. Bots have made up half of Instagram accounts for over five years.

I would think that Bots could be beaten by requiring Authentication, such as those that require typing characters from a picture, or selecting a subset of pictures with a certain element. Vut that won't happen, because the last thing we want is for users to have to spend any of their precious time authenticating. Sicial media is a hot, wet mess that is unlikely to be fixed since the providers deliberately create interfaces and features that encourage using their use, there is little verification of accounts, and users overall don't seem interested in the work they would have to do to verify they are actual humans when they post. Only things that matter are convenience and money.

...and so much of our marketing and media employment is based so heavily upon this. Ive been outbid for work simply because a competitor had a greater number of followers, albeit less experience and skill. The chicken has come home to roost.

Thank you for this invaluable report. Parents can use it to help their young children understand how many of those measures of 'popularity' are actually fabricated. There's absolutely nothing wrong with being unknown to the masses. Being an honest person is much more important, because we spend all our lives with ourselves. It's a good feeling not having to be ashamed of all the lies one considered telling, but chose not to.

From the article: "Changes to algorithms on Facebook and Instagram have significantly reduced the number of people who will see a person’s posts without paid promotion." And if that doesn't convince the skeptical of who the "product" really is... I give up.

It is lamentable that some forget ‘influencers’ came to be, in the gap years, between social media’s fledging ascendence and the launch of each platforms’ advertising service. ‘Influencers’, in those years (2007-2009, I think), served as a stopgap for advertisers to reach audiences on social media. But that divot was filled when Facebook (and others) launched native advertising. Today, an advertiser can effectively produce content and reach their target audience at a cost far lower than paying an ‘influencer’ for a similar amount of work. But if one is able to persuade a bot to believe in a marketing message, well, that’d be the mark of a true influencer.