Are social media sites evaluated way higher than they should be due to rampant bot usage?

TropicalDingdong , 4 months ago

Oh 💯. Reddit was rude with the it and was no exception. Likewise, they also run internal bots and AstroTurf accounts to buy earned media. There is no way the crappola SW movies of the previous couple years would have gone any where without this kind of AstroTurfing.

With these better AI tools, it’s bots posting to bots consuming the content.

frefi , 4 months ago

Yes! On twitter at least.

I have twitter for lurking and following some accounts, I never post anything

Here are my followers: Screenshot_20240321-135833

Just a bunch of bots…

SnotFlickerman , 4 months ago

Anyone with a brain knew that online ad metrics had been borked by bots for 15 years now. This isn’t new, it’s just the industry is still playing pretend, and as long as you have enough industry leaders playing pretend and not saying the quiet part out loud, nothing will get done.

Also, it’s a dead-end politically, because both parties love being able to sockpuppet online. Correct the Record and Cambridge Analytica are both examples of this kind of behavior from each party. They won’t make legal rules around sockpuppeting because it benefits them. They won’t go out of their way to make sockpuppets have to say they’re a paid advertisement like news and radio ads do. Because they much prefer it that it “seems like people are saying this” because they send in so many bots with their talking points. They’d prefer to flood the zone will bullshit than let citizens come to their own conclusions about anything.

So, don’t expect this problem to get better anytime soon. It’s too beneficial of a tool to the political and business classes. They won’t make any rules to stop it or make advertisers admit how many of their “views/clicks” are bots.

KillingAndKindess , 4 months ago

“…So, don’t expect this problem to get better anytime soon…”

NFS.

Pitchfoooorks! GETCHA PITCHFORKS HERE FOLKS!

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marcos , 4 months ago

Don’t buy stocks of social media companies. And save your pitchforks for some more useful application.

LibertyLizard , 4 months ago

To play devil’s advocate here, why would advertisers not object to this situation if their money is not effectively recruiting as many customers as platforms claim?

alilbee , 4 months ago

This is my take. If this held true, why are advertisers not pulling out or drastically limiting their deals with these companies? They obviously find the value proposition worth it, bots included. So, by that metric, I don’t think they’re overvalued. They’re valued on what they bring in from advertisers and that seems to be working well. I wish it didn’t (hence me being here), but reddit is exceptionally effective at delivering ads. I don’t think reddit is going to fail as hard as we all wish they would.

someguy3 , 4 months ago

Yes. Musk tried to get Twitter for cheaper and argued there are more bots than management thought.

lurch , 4 months ago

it depends on who evaluates them. some people will do it right and only look at their capital and how much money goes in and out.

morrowind , 4 months ago

Check the recent news with the super bowl and Twitter. It’s asinine how much bot traffic there is

LibertyLizard , 4 months ago

I suspect this is probably true but it’s also the type of psychologically appealing narrative that we should be sure to interrogate.

It’s certainly true that online spaces have some level of bit activity but how much? I haven’t seen data on this, but I’m sure someone must have investigated.