Artificial Humanity: Counteracting the Threat of Bot Networks on Social Media

Abstract

Text-based social networks (such as, but not limited to Twitter) serve as powerful forums for public political discourse, increasingly becoming a scalable, digital agora - a central public space as understood by ancient Greek city-states, where both merchant activity, civic discussion and political debate take place. This space, however, is now under threat from social bots (Ferrara et al., 2016) that can masquerade as humans, seize control of this public space and create the illusion of overwhelming social proof behind any cause the operators chose to champion. Operators of these social networks have been shown to be often unaware, incapable or unwilling to deal with social bots. Given the threat this poses to democratic discourse, we recommend that governments be proactive in detecting and neutralizing such operations on their home turf.