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Fake news on social media are like weaponised Artificial Intelligent propaganda machines......
The majority of the population can not differenciate a real news and a fake one. Very soon, it will be rigorous to differenciate between conversations that are automated and a real one from a real human on social media.
A crucial topic to be trending right now, due to the obvious rampages of BOTs on social medias like Steemit and Twitter which is going to be the next trends on other social outlets like Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, Reddit etc
If fake news created the scaffolding for this new automated political propaganda machines, BOTs or fake social media profiles have become its foots soldeirs- Army of political robots!......Geoffrey Colon.
In Politics, it is like chemical weapon, on the web; fake news is like wildfire in a forest, it keeps spreading beyond omagination till i wrought so many damages to properties and lives. This comparison of fake news with wildfire, is the same effect of wildfire on nature and human lives so as the effect of fake news via social media.
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Some social media comapnies had designed BOTs for the purpose of directing internet users to their website by publishing and promoting some bizzare contents that attracts an ordinary web user to them, and some to make cash from AD campaigns.
Professor Jonathan Albright, an assistant Professor and a Data scientist at Elon university stated this:
This BOTs are propaganda machines, they are targeting people individually to recruit them to an idea. It is a sophisticated level of social engineering that i have never seen before, they are capturing people and then keeping them on emotional leash and never letting them go.....
Case study- The United State Election
Back in 2016, during the election period which saw President Trump emerge as the winner. We al witnessed how some of this Propaganda machines (BOTs) were used to manipulate people of the World's perspective of each of the presidential candidates to grow some wild special political schemes e.g
Hilary Cliton's email scandal.
Donald Trump's sex abuse claims.
There were many twist and nix to each of the selected targets, to prey on the mind of potential voters and to produce a huge paradigm shifts in the opinion of the general masses.
Fake news from social medias are more than just common phenomenon, it is more than just a few slice of fake stories; it is a bigger slice of a jumbo pizza!
How to handle it
When next you read news, before you take it all in Hook Line and Sinker, when your intution is yelling "Skip this shit".....Please do! The BOTs had been created to mess with our decision making on public matters, don't allow this BOTs to win!