Bots - its benefits and problems

Do you know that in the first quarter of 2019, Facebook has removed a staggering amount of 2.19 billion bots or fake accounts and in May 2018, Twitter has removed 70 million of it in just 2 months? This shows the amount of bots accounts that exist around us that we didn’t even notice and if all this isn't removed, it will pose as a huge problem to us.

But why haven’t these bots or fake accounts been removed? I am sure social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter would have noticed it and therefore, the reason being social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter and even marketers must have received some benefits which hence, makes them reluctant to remove them and all this benefits and problems faced by consumers will be addressed in this post.

What are Bots?

But first thing first, what is bots or bots account? Bots or fake accounts refers to an agent that communicates on social media often with the task of influencing the course of discussion or opinions of its readers.

Why aren’t social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter getting rid of fake accounts?

The reason why social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter aren’t very willing to remove all these fake accounts is because they can depend on it to earn revenue and they thrive on it. This is because the more us, the real users interact and engage with these social media platforms, the more data will be generated, and this results in more advertising opportunities created for them.

In the advertisers or marketers eyes, they will see that there is a lot of people engaging with these social media platform services and therefore, come to believe that if they were to place ads on Facebook or Twitter, they will be able to reach out to a lot of people. Hence, more marketers will head on to these social media platforms to place their ads, thus, allowing Facebook and Twitter to sell more advertising slots to marketers.

Benefits and problems for marketers and businesses

For businesses and marketers, having fake accounts following them on social media helps them to actually gain more organic followers, as it will get people curious as to why this account has so many followers and hence, make them go and check out the account and its content. This helps to attract attention from real human beings and helps raise awareness for their brand or company.

While for businesses who want to be business leaders, having a social media account with many followers, allows them to address a larger group of audience, which helps these businesses to develop a reputation of being an expert in the field or develop the credibility of being the person that people should be listening to.

Also, marketers and businesses would find it more easy to buy followers as they would be able to get the amount of followers they want in a short span of minutes rather than having to constantly come up with their own content which at the end of the day, might not be effective enough to attract the attention of their target audience. Hence, won’t be successful in helping them gain any followers or any awareness.

However, the problem is that because these accounts are fake, they are not going to interact or engage with any content that the business is going to post, and they won’t be buying any of the company's products. One reason why advertisers buy ads is because they not only want to reach out to their target audience but also, to their target audience’s friends. Therefore, if most of the business’s followers are fake, then their friends would probably be other fake accounts as well which make running ads seems worthless.

Problems for consumers

For consumers, all these bots accounts on social media can pose many problems for them. These bots accounts can be used to spread fake news which is a big problem as based on a survey done by IPSOS, 4 out of 5 Singaporeans cannot tell the difference between fake news and actual news. This is especially so with most of the fake news being masterfully manipulated to look like credible journal articles to easily spread it to larger audiences, who believe it is true and further spread it on.

If not taken care of, it can be used to manipulate us into thinking a certain way or behave a certain way such as in politics. For example, Mitt Romney was caught buying 100 000 followers on Twitter when he is running for President of the United States and it is said that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton too have purchased followers when they were running for their Presidential campaign.

Politicians like them can use the bots accounts to feed us all the good points about themselves and use it to spread their ideology which causes us to not be exposed to other perspectives of the subject or even go listen to what other politicians have to say. Therefore, causing us to behave in a way that they want us to.

Another problem is influencing our decision making for example bots account can constantly spam details about products which influence customers to purchase the products that they don’t exactly need or products that aren’t as good as the Bots might have said it is. Also, Bots can be used to spread health advice that have not been scientifically proven to others. For example, spreading on the information that if smokers who wish to quit smoking can opt for vaping which is cheaper and healthier, which is not the case.

Wrapping things up

In conclusion, to different parties, bots have its own share of benefits and problems but to me, I think bots are a major problem and I feel that this shouldn’t be how things are to be done. It feels as if the users of bots are trying to cheat their way to success without going through or doing all the work that a company or user needs to do in order to get that many followers.

Also, imagine all the fake news that can be spread using bots accounts! With so many of us who do not know how to differentiate actual news from fake news, imagine what the world will be like if all these bots accounts are not removed! There probably won’t be much actual news anymore. Hence, I feel that stronger actions should be put in place to counter all these acts. So, what do you think? Are bots beneficial or it is a major problem to us, consumers or businesses? Feel free to share with me what you think by dropping a comment!