Could We One Day See a Service on Steem for Detecting Bots?
A couple of days ago I came across an article that a couple of students from the California Bay Area have developed an algorithm that can detect fake news and bots on Twitter.
http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2017/11/04/cal-students-expose-fake-news-accounts-bots-twitter/
Their algorithm aims mainly at fake news and propaganda bots but can distinguish the characteristics of human behavior.
“Looking further into these accounts, we realized some of these accounts aren’t really human behavior,” says Phadte. “They’re constantly retweeting every minute throughout the 24 hours, they have thousands of followers – but they created their account really only a month ago”
They launched the site https://botcheck.me and also created a Google Chrome extension to use.
They say their accuracy rate is around 93.5% and should increase as more and more people use their service.
What I found interesting about this is, could this be something that can be used on Steem?
Steem Bots
There is a lot of users that don't agree with bot usage on the Steem platform and I used to be one of them but that changed over time after seeing the bigger picture. I just wonder if something like what those students developed could be possible for a blockchain. I think it can be done but would it be necessary or something that would be wanted by the Steem community?
There are many great advantages of bot usage on Steem and the fact that this is a blockchain and where rewards are involved, would we even need something like this? Perhaps maybe in the future when the there is a larger userbase we would need something like this but I think having bots like we do now early on with the platform definitely helps with the development and the overall stability.
I mentioned that since rewards are involved, there are many bots that help users earn more rewards and get data from the Steem blockchain. I think that's where many people that support bots would disagree with having some type of service to detect bots and the fact that essentially, that type of service is a bot itself. An anti-bot bot lol.
Good Bots and Bad Bots
There are tons of good bots out there that many of us use that improve the user experience. Things like Siri, Google, Alexa, all are automated bots that are useful. These type of good bots allows us to be innovative and to bring that type of use is important to social media and a platform like Steem.
There are also a lot of bad bots out there that can be a hinder to platforms and systems that make the user experience less enjoyable. Like bots that are used for malicious purposes like fake news and political propaganda.
The video below is kind of corny but has a few good points on the issue that social media platforms are facing when it comes to bots.
Conclusion
When there is something negative, there is usually a positive outcome and vice versa. It's a balance and in many ways, it's good to have these type of issues because it allows us to innovate ways to tackle problems like these and be self-corrective.
Image Sources: 1,2
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I suggested this to some friends and followers in February and added it to my project ideas tracker with name Bot or not?
Just like the Twitter bot detector guys said. I think it would be easy enough to find 95% of bots, and you'd need some advanced machine learning or similar to find the rest. If there's a desire for this I could try to find some time to do it in the next months.
The question is begged though: why would someone want it? Would it affect your patronage of someone's posts, or your friendship with them? Or reverse it, that the service will give a badge to people who are demonstrably not bots?
Wow cool. I think those are some great questions to ask. I think it would be a good thing to have a service like that on Steem that give a type of badge as this seems a more positive way to go and give a user more "credibility".
I think it's something to experiment with ;)
Could be something to do. Maybe I'll do it through utopian.io since they now have over 3M in funds so might actually be worth while 🙃
I tend to agree with you @bitcoinparadise. Bots are like money. Both are amoral. Its use for either good or bad is dictated by the person who commands it. Hope you're doing good!
I personally think, there should not be any bots on steemit. Steemit platform should have more value for the interaction and voting of real people. Steemit is social media, where we come to socialize and interact with people, not with bots. Our rewards and earning should be determined by a system based on people/humans not on the tactical usage of bots.
Well, the thing is it's a blockchain. So it's not any different from users using a different blockchain and making multiple wallet addresses. People can make multiple accounts and the fact is, bots can help distribute the rewards more than a human reading every single post. At the same time, you receive curation rewards for voting on posts so I think in this beginning of the Steem platform, it's kind of good to have.
I hear you on what you're saying and thought the same too. Like I said that this being a blockchain, one of the main goal is to make money being a capitalistic platform.
Very cool, I'm definitely guilty of responding to a bot once or twice. You could say I failed the turing test!
Have you seen the HBO show Westworld?
Dang bots are everywhere! As for their usefulness.. well I love my google assistant, but so far on Steemit they haven't improved my experience any.
What would Steemit be without it's bots?
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STOPnice post bro.....i just upvoted you
thanks for the vote on my Thor picture have a great day, and keep up the good content!!
It is easy to spot the Robots on Steemit they are so Stupid ....
nice post