Photo Credit: Shutterstock
When it comes to all the misinformation and disinformation on social media these days, it’s fashionable to blame the “super-spreaders” or any of the various “conspiracy theory” influencers out there. But maybe, just maybe, we should be taking a closer look at malicious social media bots, who may ultimately be responsible for much of the misinformation and disinformation on the internet.
Finland vs. the COVID-19 bots
To understand the scale and scope of the bot problem, consider a recent example from Finland. A recently published article in the academic journal Social Science Computer Review focused on the surge in misinformation and disinformation in Finland during the COVID-19 pandemic. It turns out that bots were responsible for hundreds of thousands of false messages about COVID-19 on social media.
According to the researchers, bots were flooding the zone with content. In fact, more than one-fifth (22%) of all messages related to COVID-19 were being created by bots. Nearly one-fourth of all messages included some element of misinformation or disinformation. And roughly one-third (36%) of all bots acted in a manner that the researchers referred to as “malicious.”
In other words, not only were the bots putting bad information out there, but they were also doing so on purpose. It’s unclear exactly why they did so. Maybe the creators of the bots really were concerned about the new vaccines, and thought they were doing humanity a favor by spreading misinformation about them. Maybe the bot creators really thought that it could be helpful to spread fake information about lockdowns and government health policies.
Malicious bots in action
Here’s the thing that’s the most concerning – the bots appeared to use “aggressive and deceptive” tactics in order to spread that fake information. So these weren’t passive bots that sat around all day, pushing out the same inane message, over and over again. Bots were actively learning how to game the system, and thus, how to sow as much chaos as possible.
For example, one strategy that the researchers pointed out was an attempt by the bots to target the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare with their content. In the United States, that would be roughly comparable to attempting to target the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, or maybe the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). Imagine if every message sent out by the CDC on Twitter was somehow corrupted by bots telling you to do the opposite of what the CDC was telling you to do.
How to stop the bots
Obviously, something needs to be done about these malicious bots. If bad actors were running rampant on Finnish social media during the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s a near certainty that the same bad actors were also running rampant on U.S. social media.
But what can realistically be done? One option, of course, is to ask the big social media platforms to do a better job of policing content. Good luck with that. Another possible solution is coming up with better detection tools, perhaps with the help of artificial intelligence (AI).
But what the example from Finland seems to be indicating is another potential solution: doing a better job of informing and educating the public, such that they won’t be tricked into following the advice of malicious social media bots.
Unfortunately, there’s no way to reduce this problem down to zero. There will always be bad actors out there. But at least we can start taking concrete steps to make social media a safer place. And that’s especially true when it comes to matters of public health.
