Bot and Paid For: Will Bots Be The Downfall of Social Media?

I just read a fascinating New York Times article: The Follower Factory. To fully understand the corrupting role bots can play in social media I urge you to read this lengthy article.

Certainly the more tech-savvy Stemmians are well aware of the phenomenon of vote buying via bot and many use these critters to enhance their posts, get more reads and collect more Steem. I've been a bit uncomfortable with this from the start, but I had no idea how pervasive it is in the most popular platforms like Twitter, Facebook, You-tube and all the networks driven by advertising revenue.

The NYT article reveals that follower bots cost anywhere from one to two cents apiece and are used to increase a poster's apparent popularity. The article examines one company (one of many) that offers this service, Devumi.

These bots misrepresent themselves as flesh and blood followers, many designed to cough up phony comments and likes on a timed basis. Furthermore, they often pirate the identities and accounts of real people, use their icon and background and then go on to follow the person who paid Devumi for bots: personalities the real person would never follow of their own accord.

This isn't small change, either.

Drawing on an estimated stock of at least 3.5 million automated accounts, each sold many times over, the company has provided customers with more than 200 million Twitter followers, a New York Times investigation found.

And that's just Twitter!

These fake accounts, known as bots, can help sway advertising audiences and reshape political debates. They can defraud businesses and ruin reputations. Yet their creation and sale fall into a legal gray zone.

Meanwhile, Twitter claims that this practice is not allowed.

According to the article there are three main types of bots:

• Scheduling bots that tweet in a timely manner
• Watcher bots that tweet when something changes in an account it follows
• Amplification bots that tweet about and retweet those they follow to spread their tweets far and wide.

Because of the commercial nature of the behemoths of social media, the vast majority of Devumi's customers are people with something to sell: companies, celebrities, politicians and entrepreneurs. Though sleazy and something I would consider to be misrepresentation if not outright fraud, it does not appear to be illegal.

Steemit claims to be different, but the monetary aspect of Steem cannot be ignored and the desire to use bots to enhance monetary gain is alive and well on Steemit, in fact, built right into its structure.

Steemit uses bots, a lot of bots. Our bots automatically upvote and curate for their controllers. Whales typically use bots and consortiums of Steemians also pool their resources and then use bots to increase their revenues. You can even buy upvotes from some of these curation consortiums, which is rationalized as good financial sensibility because it indeed works.

I know the creators of this blogging platform want it to be a success. They stand to make billions of it does.

Posts constantly appear claiming that Steemit is far different from the other platforms and indeed it is. We can say pretty much anything we want here without fear of being censored and trolling is kept to a minimum. We can earn cryptocurrency directly without resorting to selling a good or service. We have a captive audience of Steemians who are anxious to connect, curate, post and personally benefit from their activities on this platform. These features are what makes this platform valuable to me and is why I'm here instead of elsewhere.

Of course, the game is rigged in favor of the investors. They will gain most of the Steem that we artists, photographers and writers create with our efforts. Perhaps this is as it should be. Those early adapters and investors need a good return on their investments. But I would hate to see Steemit fall to the lure of short-term profits over long-term social media dominance.

I certainly am not sophisticated when it comes to this new age of information connectivity. I'm merely trying to tread water in this turbulent Steemian Sea. I need the more technically sophisticated of you to help me understand what we're doing here. I need some questions answered.

I've already decided that popularity trumps quality on Steemit, no matter what they claim. I also know that those who have the most influential friends make the most Steem. It's who you know not what you know. Just like life in the world outside of the blogosphere.

Mainstream social media members are already sick and tired of memes like "fake news." Now it is revealed that there are "fake followers" and that their favorite rock star isn't really all that popular after all, that much of what they read on social media is also fake. Dissatisfaction is brewing.

Can Steemit really offer them the safe harbor we all want, a place where real people encounter real people and exchange real ideas? If it can, we will continue to grow gain members. If not we'll collapse with all the other social platforms.

Is Steemit vulnerable to the type of tactics employed by Devumi?

Can we guard against such tactics?

Do we want to, or should we just take the low road and try to get as much as we can as fast as we can before the whole thing goes under? It appears there are some here that might get very wealthy following this path.

What do you think? What can we do about it? Do we really have any power here as individuals or do we need to play this game to win and conquer new territory with an army of bots?

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