Washington Post
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'Bots' are becoming more human-like. What does that mean for 2020?
Posted
November 19, 2019
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November 19, 2019
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5:01Now PlayingOn Nov. 20, the nation will, for the fifth time, see Democratic presidential candidates dual it out on the debate stage. Viewers nationwide will undoubtedly be commenting in real-time on social media. However, the online conversations during the last four debates have raised questions about bot-like activity.
Not all bots are disinformation-spreading political bots. They range from spam bots to product-selling bots, and even random joke-making bots. But we wanted to see if bots were actually influencing conversations online. So, we decided to take a closer look at the data.
While human conversation still drive a lot of what happens on Twitter, it’s important to recognize the new, everevolving challenge of identifying bots before they influence a conversation. Bots today are better at imitating humans than they’ve ever been before. Twitter has created algorithms to detect sophisticated botlike activity, but as the algorithms advance, so do bot networks. Read moreSubscribe to The Washington Post on YouTube
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