Social media platforms- Home to millions of social bots

There are billions of human beings using social media, there are also millions of robots, or bots, residing within. Bots help to propagate fake news and inflate the apparent popularity of fake news on social media. Social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.) have become home to millions of social bots that spread fake news. There have been several reports on creating fake profiles in social media. There have been several police complaints on fake profiles. People with a massive following on social media nowadays get demigod status, and this has also become the latest tool to measure their importance, their popularity, and their influence.

The truth behind this virtual reality may disappoint you, as the majority of followers of these stars and celebrities are fake and they are facilitated through certain companies. Under this social media scam, influential people buy a large number of fake followers to flaunt their popularity and star status. This is a business model to facilitate followers after charging money to promote a product or to speak in favour of any person.

There were cases reported , the Mumbai Police has found over 200 high-profile people, including some Bollywood celebrities, sportspersons, and social media influencers, who allegedly paid money to get fake or ghost followers. The investigation has also revealed that these companies tamper with servers related to social media platforms to facilitate a surge in the number of likes, comments, and followers.

Artificial intelligence allows bots to simulate internet users’ behavior (e.g., posting patterns) which helps in the propagation of fake news. For instance, on Twitter, bots are capable of a number of social interactions that make them appear to be regular people. They respond to postings or questions from others based on scripts that they were programmed to use. They look for influential Twitter users (Twitter users who have lots of followers), and contact them by sending them questions in order to be noticed and generate trust from them and from other Twitter users who see the exchanges take place.

A report states, 70.4% of Twitter users are male, while only 29.6% are female and most of Twitter’s audience is 25 to 34 years old (38.5%.) The spread of fake news by social bots is possible due the capabilities that bots have to search and retrieve non-curated information (information that has not been validated yet) on the web. Bots in social media sites post continuously, spreading non-curated content using trending topics and hashtags as the main strategies to reach a broader audience which, in many cases, further helps the propagation of the fake news. So bots spread fake news in two ways.

Sources said there are several companies using these tricks in India too. Another source says, There are apps available in the open market, which allows users to bypass controls like email and text-message verification that companies like Twitter and Facebook build into their products. It can also act as a master control for a number of Twitter accounts, fake or otherwise, pushing hashtags, content and retweets through a single interface. There are billionaires who now control vast swathes of the media landscape includes:

Elon Musk owns Twitter

Jeff Bezos owns Washington Post

Rupert Murdoch owns Times, The Sunday Times, The Sun, Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, several Australian titles and

Mark Zuckerberg owns Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp

Dr. Deepak Kumar Sahu, President & CEO, VARINDIA