The Silksworth Post: Your Global Village is not a credentialed news source.
Started in April, 2022.
This information may help discernment of FAKE NEWS site:
- There is no founder.
- Reporters are random no imprints or information on copyright and authors. IF THIS TYPE OF INFORMATION IS MISSING YOU SHOULD NOT TRUST THIS SOURCE OF SCARED CONTENT.
- A new social media account sharing sensational content could point to a social bot or internet troll.
- Targeted misinformation: Fictitious piece of information shared for self-serving interests. Targeted misinformation is often directed at groups that are most susceptible and easily accept sharing polarizing content without verifying its authenticity.
- Visual content can be quickly taken out of context.
To understand the dangers of SOCIAL BOTS and how to recognize them, you need to know how bot technology works. This is followed by a brief outline of what a bot is and an explanation of the bot types that exist.
WHAT IS A BOT?
A bot (shortened form of ‘robot’) is an automated program that is programmed for certain actions and executes them either regularly or reactively. The bot does this without needing human activation. It analyzes the environment and ‘decides’ which actions to take depending on the situation.
Fact
A 2016 study by Incapsula concluded that more than half of the world’s internet traffic is generated by bots. Nearly 30% of these bots were identified as bad bots (Source: “https://www.incapsula.com/blog/bot-traffic-report-2016.html“).
The different types of bots sometimes differ greatly when it comes to their technical complexity. The spectrum ranges from simple algorithms to highly complex AI technology. If a bot works with artificial intelligence, it is even capable of learning: it explores its surroundings and adapts to them.
Depending on the function, a bot isn’t usually recognized by humans and performs its tasks unnoticed in the background, or appears as a human being (i.e. imitates human behavior). Some types of bots are described below in more detail:
WEB CRAWLER: They belong to the category of bots that work completely unnoticed. Usually they are used by search engines to browse the web, analyze websites, and then enter this information into search directories. They usually act as ‘innocent’ within generally accepted standards (such as the Robots Exclusion Standard). Other web crawlers operate beyond these standards and collect unauthorized data on the net.
CHAT BOTS: In contrast to web crawlers, chat bots are reactive i.e. they react to human activities and specialize in responding to other chat participants in a meaningful way. In everyday life, chat bots are primarily encountered as digital assistants. For example, a website assistant can guide visitors through the website or answer questions about the website’s topic or what it offers. Language assistants such as Siri or OK Google or external language assistants such as Amazon Echo or Google Home are also based on this chat bot technology.
VIRTUAL COMPUTER PLAYERS: Virtual computer games also require virtual actors who react flexibly to human beings. These operations are performed by bots. They are called non-player characters (role-playing games), aim bots (action games), poker bots (online poker) and so on. These bots are reactive and work increasingly with artificial intelligent technology. A good example is Google’s artificial intelligence, which is called AlphaZero. It excelled in Chess as well as the board game, Go. Intelligent technologies like these are also used in computer games – in the form of bots.
SOCIAL BOTS: These are the bots that are used secretly in social networks. They are both repetitive and reactive: They like, comment, retweet, and try to provoke or involve others in conversations and discussions. They fake a human identity so that users react naturally to them.
https://www.ionos.com/digitalguide/online-marketing/social-media/social-bots/