Assertion Contradicted AI assessment confidence: 92% certainty 4/5 debate potential 1/5

Sophisticated bots use natural language technology to reply in comment threads

Samantha Bradshaw · Tracking Political Manipulation Through Social Media - Samantha Bradshaw · Y Combinator · Jan 23, 2019 · at 1:54

Samantha Bradshaw, an Oxford Internet Institute researcher studying computational propaganda, details the technical methods bots use to interact on social media platforms.

0:00 / 0:37exact quote · 37.2s
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“Some of the more sophisticated bots might actually interact with real people so they blend, like, chatbot bot technology and, you know, we all have been to those customer service pages where the thing pops up at the bottom and says, hi, can I help you today? That's not actually a real person, that's another kind of bot, but it uses a lot of natural language to interact with people, and so That kind of technology can be plugged into some of the bots that we're seeing on social media platforms to actually respond to users in comment threads or post like a little comment about a story that's being shared.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

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The junk news sharing ratio worsened to 1.3:1 during 2018 midterms
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Assertion Supported
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