Tech Tips for Non-Tech People!
Original Air Date: Jun 3, 2016
Bot or Not Tool
Think about how influential social media has become in virtually every aspect of our lives.
Everything from simple buying decisions to politics, the stock market and even global conflicts are all influenced by social media every day.
This has given rise to a technology referred to as 'social bots' which are nothing more than software programs that attempt to appear to be real humans.
They’re commonly used by companies for automated postings while spam artists employ them to flood our profiles with junk ads. Some governments use them as simple propaganda machines.
Unfortunately, these bots can also be used to infect your accounts and circulate malicious links, so it’s best to avoid them whenever you can.
It seems that Twitter particularly has a large percentage of accounts that are leveraging social bots, which made way for a compelling research project at Indiana University.
The Truthy Project’s Bot or Not tool was created to analyze Twitter accounts for indications that they're using a social bot.
While it's not a definite appraisal, it can be a handy tool to avoid getting fooled by a profile that appears to be a real live human.
The link is posted at DataDoctors.com/radio
http://truthy.indiana.edu/botornot/