Everything is Not as it Seems: Social Media Bot Takeover

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Forget bitcoin, the new online currency is your social media following. More and more consumers rely on the recommendations and opinions of their favorite celebrities and tastemakers when making purchasing decisions.

With social media, these endorsements can easily be found right at our fingertips.  While social empires are built on reputation, one quantifiable value that can be determined is the number of followers a person or brand maintains. Not only do these profiles become valid and reliable based off of this number, but brands are more interested in partnerships with influencers who can garner large followings. But what is being accomplished if their following isn’t authentic? Drawing back the curtain, we’re finding that social media bots have become an epidemic.

In January 2018, a New York Times investigation exposed the American company, Devumi, for selling fake Twitter followers, or “bots”, to anyone willing to pay the price. Bots are fake accounts posing as actual users contributing to the Twittersphere with paid, disingenuous content. Research suggests that nearly 200 million Twitter bots have been added to the platform via Devumi. These bots are regularly interacting on Twitter, some more frequently than authentic users. Kirstin Binns, a Twitter spokeswoman reassured readers in The New York Times, “We continue to fight hard to tackle any malicious automation on our platform as well as false or spam accounts.” Twitter is now actively attempting to purge their platform of its bot population.

Bots are not exclusive to Twitter alone, but that platform seems to be the hub running wild with false identities and stolen profiles. Notable users have noticed significant drops in their followings, most likely due to Twitter’s expulsion. Well-known brands and celebrities have fallen victim to this scheme which depletes the value of their individual brand. “Brands want to invest in social media without damage,” said Bijoy Patel, founder of CompuBrain, a service for analyzing influence on Facebook and Twitter. “They want to know there’s real engagement,” he told Mashable.

Be on the lookout for these types of profiles. There are three categories of bots recognized today. A scheduled bot is one that sends time-based messages periodically throughout the day. A watcher bot sends messages whenever something drastically changes online, for example a natural disaster. An amplification bot is one that follows, retweets, and likes content by profiles who have paid for the service.

So how can someone dependent on their online reputation ensure their audience that they are credible? Websites such as Fohr Card help certify an influencer or brand’s following to validate their profiles.  Influencers involved in partnerships determine their price based on the size of their following so a verification takes away any level of “assumed importance” and shows the cold hard facts. Those gaining traction based on inconsistency might see their rise to fame cut short as platforms crack down.

Since its inception in 2006, 330 million users have logged on to Twitter to share anything and everything, from the imperative to mundane. It has changed the way we communicate as well as the how we consume information. Twitter’s long awaited character increase may have just given bots more to say. Ultimately, it is important to recognize what is real and what is a masking as a bot. Authentic transparency is vital to all users on the platform as Twitter continues growth in the industry.