It’s estimated that bots comprise 5% to 15% of all social media accounts. That means at least 1 in 20 or possibly more than 1 in 6 “people” you interact with on social media may be bots – but how can you tell?
How bad are bots on X, Instagram, Facebook and the like? In a word: very! Americans may have more interactions online with bots than with their spouses. While social media companies have tried to take drastic actions, platforms like X still struggle with combatting bots, in some instances where bots on X are worse now than ever before.
How To Spot Fake Social Media Bots
Malicious bots can distort the truth, scam people out of money, and invade your privacy. Bots have been weaponized as a tool to manipulate foreign countries and their leadership as well as financial scammers in increasingly sophisticated ways.
With the inception of chat-bot AI systems and sophisticated scams on X, Facebook and Instagram, knowing how to spot a fake user is more critical than ever. Here are some key tips on how to do that:
Review Their Profile
An easy way to tell if an account is a bot or a real person is to check the user profile. Bots usually lack photos, have inconsistent photos or AI generated photos. They lack bios or the bios they do have are generic.
- Bio: No bio, short and generic bio, or a bio that’s too specific.
- Photos: No photos, inconsistent photos, or AI generated photos.
- Account Age: Newer accounts are generally more suspect than established accounts.
- Review Followers: No or low followers, followers that all follow each other (bot net activity), followers that have no content or followers themselves, followers to likes ratio (if they have 10K followers but their posts garner 50-100 likes, probably fake).
Review Their Posts
While bots can mimic humans, they are always subject to their programing and looking over their posts may show you patterns in that programming.
- Tunnel Vision: Bots are created for a purpose. This could make them seemingly obsessed with a particular topic by repeating a link too much.
- Temporal Behavior: Too many posts in too short of a time, posts that are too consistent. If an account posts at unlikely times or even too regularly, it can be an indicator that it’s fake.
- Look at comments: Review comments to see if there are scam links or suspicious replies to note.
Know If You’re Chatting With A Bot
When you’re chatting with someone online, it’s never unreasonable to ask: am I speaking with a bot or a person? It can be trickier than many of us think. Social media bots are getting better and better at the Turing test but there are still some tell-tale signs.
Unfortunately, this isn’t Blade Runner, there aren’t a magical set of questions to ask to tell if someone is a bot or not. However, there are some signs you can look for:
- Vague replies: Bots will often be vague in hopes that you put your own meaning onto their words and that their vagueness will apply to whatever you just said.
- Bad at subtext: Bots have a hard time picking up on sarcasm or the general tone of a conversation. You can test bots by assuming context or being slightly sarcastic to see how they respond.
- Response speed: Some bots reply too quickly or at highly regimented times. This pattern of behavior is atypical, especially on social media.
- Topic fixation: Bots are programmed for a specific outcome so a fixation on a particular topic that gets to that outcome is common.
- Personal questions: Bots can ask odd and or specific personal questions with the goal of learning more about you to ultimately scam.
Good Social Bots Vs. Bad Social Bots
A bot is any automated program used to post or interact on social media. These can range from useful to malicious. Not all social media bots are bad, there are automated accounts that post information for their followers. Good social bots come from reputable sources and either identify themselves as bots or post content vetted by those sources. Examples of good bots cover things like:
- Sports news
- Weather updates
- Wire news
- Public information or announcements
- Financial news
However, there are malicious bots that can cause havoc on social media by doing things such as:
- Financial scams
- Crypto scams
- Spread misinformation
- Amplify hate speech
- Install spyware
- Identity Theft
- Spread malware
- Steal social media accounts
How Businesses Deal With Bots On Social
Bots are bad for businesses too. They can mess up marketing campaigns, slow down your site, steal brand credibility, and commit fraud. To deal with this companies use a variety of methods
- Bot detection: Identifying patterns and activities of bots.
- Bot monitoring: Updating IP blocklists and analyzing traffic.
- Bot protection: Cyber security and technical stack considerations that reduce bot risk.
All businesses with an online presence need to be aware of non-human agents on their websites. They are designed to be deceptive. At times, bots are believed to be better at making a sale than inexperienced humans. However, when they sell misinformation or manipulate users, businesses need to get serious about monitoring and preventing ad fraud on their platforms.
Detecting ad fraud in all its forms is what Fraudlogix does best! Contact us today to discover our cutting-edge ad fraud defenses and innovative data solutions tailored for enterprise-level companies in the AdTech and MarTech industries.
