Bot amplification
Using automated accounts to repeat, share, and boost a message, so that platforms and audiences read the manufactured volume as popularity.
Platforms rank by engagement and people trust what many others seem to endorse. Bot amplification feeds both with counterfeit: thousands of accounts that post, like, and repost on command, at a scale and speed no organic audience produces. The message trends, the trend is reported, and the report is real. Bandwagon and astroturfing built the crowd by hand; bots build it by script.
Research since 2016 has measured the practice on every major platform. Ferrara and colleagues estimated that a substantial share of accounts discussing the 2016 U.S. election were automated; the Senate Intelligence Committee's reports on the Internet Research Agency documented the state version; the "follower factory" investigation documented the commercial one, in which celebrities and companies bought audiences by the million. Exploits Social Proof and Bandwagon Effect.
Historical examples
Ferrara's analysis of some twenty million election-related tweets estimated that roughly a fifth of the accounts involved were bots, generating a larger share of the volume, and that the automated accounts were retweeted by humans at similar rates to human ones. The finding, that people could not tell, is the device's whole premise.
Bessi, Alessandro, and Emilio Ferrara. "Social Bots Distort the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election Online Discussion." First Monday 21, no. 11 (2016); Ferrara, Emilio, et al. "The Rise of Social Bots." Communications of the ACM 59, no. 7 (2016): 96–104.
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence's bipartisan report on the Internet Research Agency, the St. Petersburg "troll factory," documented networks of automated and semi-automated accounts used to amplify divisive content across American platforms, alongside the human-run personas. Volume was the strategy: the same messages pushed from thousands of accounts until the platforms' own systems carried them.
U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Report on Russian Active Measures Campaigns and Interference in the 2016 U.S. Election, Volume 2: Russia's Use of Social Media. Washington, 2019; DiResta, Renée, et al. The Tactics & Tropes of the Internet Research Agency. New Knowledge, 2018.
In advertising and commerce
The New York Times' "Follower Factory" investigation traced a company, Devumi, that had sold some 200 million fake followers and automated engagements to celebrities, athletes, businesses, and politicians, using accounts built from stolen identities. New York's attorney general found the practice illegal in 2019. The buyers wanted the appearance of an audience; the appearance was the product.
Confessore, Nicholas, Gabriel J. X. Dance, Richard Harris, and Mark Hansen. "The Follower Factory." The New York Times, 27 January 2018; New York Attorney General, settlement with Devumi LLC, 30 January 2019.
Pick a trending topic. Open twenty of the accounts pushing it. How many look like people you'd recognize as real? What do the others have in common?
In the wild
Short examples of the technique at work, each with what to notice. The same examples are questions in the quiz, where the answer is not given away.
A post about the referendum reached 40,000 shares in an hour; 30,000 came from accounts created that month with no other activity.
What to notice. Automated accounts manufacture the volume; the platform's ranking and the audience's trust follow.
A brand-new product's account has two million followers and eleven comments on its launch post.
What to notice. Bought audience: the count is counterfeit and the engagement ratio shows it.
Every reply to the minister's post is the same two sentences from a different account.
What to notice. Scripted, automated repetition rather than a coordinated human line; the identical text at scale is the tell.
Sources
- Ferrara, Emilio, Onur Varol, Clayton Davis, Filippo Menczer, and Alessandro Flammini. "The Rise of Social Bots." Communications of the ACM 59, no. 7 (2016): 96–104. doi:10.1145/2818717
- Woolley, Samuel C., and Philip N. Howard, eds. Computational Propaganda: Political Parties, Politicians, and Political Manipulation on Social Media. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. ISBN 978-0190931407
- U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Report on Russian Active Measures Campaigns and Interference in the 2016 U.S. Election, Volume 2. Washington, 2019.
- Confessore, Nicholas, et al. "The Follower Factory." The New York Times, 27 January 2018.