Social media bots can influence and change users’ opinions and online behaviors. As automated entities, bots are capable of amplifying messages, controlling conversations, and influencing trends. These capabilities can have negative implications for brands and businesses promoting on social media. Because of this potential influence, brands need to learn how to spot bots on social media. Identifying bots is not only essential for brand protection and integrity, but it is also an excellent practice to preserve authentic social media interaction for users, creators, and brands.
Types of Social Media Bots
Social media bots are automated or semi-automated accounts that can be categorized based on the tasks they perform, what they detect, and their impact on user experience.
Automated content generators
Automated bots create and post content automatically. They can be programmed to follow specific guidelines or parameters. These accounts that use automated content generators usually have regular posting patterns, consistent tone, and style, and lack engagement with their followers. Automated content generators provide users with consistent updates, but they can flood their feeds with content.
Semi-automated bots
Semi-automated social media bots are typically fake accounts with fake personalities that are run at least partially by humans or click farms. They mimic real users’ activities like liking, commenting, and following, but their actions are partially automated. Accounts that use semi-automated bots have unrealistic engagement levels, irrelevant comments, and patterns in activity that suggest automation. Semi-automated bots can artificially boost engagement metrics to make the content look more popular. Their usage reduces the authenticity and quality of community interactions.
Malicious bots
These bots are often used for marketing or political purposes. Within this category, there are three types of malicious bots. Disinformation bots are known for spreading fake news, influencing public opinion, and manipulating online discussion. Spam bots flood social media with unwanted content. Fake account bots impersonate real people for malicious purposes. Accounts that use malicious bots propagate false information and have a high frequency of posts and sudden spikes in follower count or activity. Malicious bots reduce users’ online experiences as well as the trust they have in social media.
Influence of Social Media Bots
The different types of social media bots we’ve outlined above can influence user experience and behavior in multiple areas of communication. Bots can spread disinformation, manipulate public opinion, and impact political processes.
Manipulation of perception
Social media bots can artificially inflate engagement metrics such as likes, shares, and comments. Their presence can create a false sense of popularity around certain content or individuals that manipulate public opinions.
Political influence
Bots can influence public political opinion on political events, public health, and climate change issues. Social media bots are capable of promoting specific candidates, parties, or ideologies. They implement their influence by flooding social media with biased content that can affect voters’ perceptions and decisions.
Behavioral changes
Bots can change emotional responses in users, and impact users’ behaviors and interactions. They can influence how individuals perceive certain issues, events, or people by generating positive or negative sentiments around specific topics.
Spread of misinformation
Bots are involved in up to 20% of social media conversations. As social media bots actively participate in discussions about elections, political issues, and public health, they can easily spread fake news and conspiracy theories online.
How Social Media Bots Work
The functionalities of these bots can vary widely, ranging from innocent and helpful tasks to malicious and deceptive activities.
Sock puppet accounts
These accounts may use stolen or generated profile information and often lack genuine personal details. Sock puppet accounts create fake personas with realistic profiles to engage in discussions or spread specific information. While pretending to be real individuals, these accounts can manipulate opinions by creating a fake sense of consensus.
Post content
Social media bots can automatically generate and post content, including text, images, and videos, at a high frequency. Bots use algorithms to generate relevant and trending content to keep users engaged. Some bots are programmed to mimic human-like posting patterns to avoid detection.
Manipulate interactions
Bots can perform engagement actions like liking, sharing, commenting, and following/unfollowing other accounts. Social media bots can boost the visibility of specific posts or accounts to create a sense of high engagement. Their usage messes with engagement metrics and can falsely elevate the popularity of certain content.
Spread false information
Bots can be used to spread false information, fake news, or propaganda. Social media bots can amplify certain narratives by strategically sharing content with targeted audiences to misinform them.
Identity theft
Social media bots can impersonate real users or public figures by using stolen profile information and images. Bot accounts are used to deceive or scam users using a trusted figure. Bots can damage the reputation of the impersonated individuals.
Spam and phishing
Bots are involved in spamming activities, bombarding users with unwanted messages, links, or advertisements to provide sensitive information or download malicious content. Social media bot accounts pose security risks for users while also cluttering users’ social media experience with irrelevant and harmful content.
Identifying Social Media Bots
Social media bots can be challenging to identify, as they are often designed to mimic human behavior and can often slip through spam filters. Look for the following signs to identify bots in your comments feed:
Unusual activity patterns
Bots often engage in rapid and repetitive actions, such as liking or retweeting at an unusually high rate.
Generic profile information
Bots often use generic profile information, such as generic usernames, lack of profile pictures, or bio sections with vague or nonspecific content.
Low followers
Bots may follow many accounts while having very few genuine followers in return.
Abnormal language
Bots might exhibit unnatural language patterns, including grammatical errors, awkward phrasing, or generic and non-contextual language.
Automated content
Bots may post repetitive content that has no meaning, including strings of random characters, copied phrases, or repeated messages.
Future Trends of Social Media Bots
As technology advances, social media bots are expected to be more and more integrated into customers’ social media experiences. Some of the key future trends include:
Conversational bots
Bots will likely become more skillful and efficient at engaging in meaningful conversations. Social media bots’ potential improvements will make them more convincing in social media interactions.
Adaptive behavior
Future social media bots might adapt and learn from user interactions. Bots’ adaptability will enable them to evolve their strategies to evade detection and make them more effective.
Blockchain integration
Blockchain technology might be integrated into social media platforms to enhance identity verification. This integration would make it more difficult for bots to create fake accounts.
AI-powered customer service
The future of bots is expected to be more AI-powered, leading to fewer human customer service interactions and more automated assistance through chatbots.
Improve Your Community Engagement with ICUC Social
Social media bots are drastically shaping user social media experiences and online interactions. Learn how to protect your brand online with effective moderation strategies. Consider outsourcing to 24/7 social media community management and moderation teams like ICUC — our comprehensive, global solutions protect your business while maintaining an authentic human connection in your brand’s social media. Book a meeting with us to learn more.
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