There Are No Girls on the Internet - Britney Spears released a hit memoir. Are bots shaping the conversation？

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00:00:34.940 I survived nine months in captivity,

00:00:38.460 and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them.

00:00:43.680 I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are The Survivor Files.

00:00:47.300 Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable,

00:00:51.020 abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.

00:00:54.640 These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive.

00:00:58.700 Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:01:06.820 Just a quick heads up, today's episode talks about pregnancy termination.

00:01:14.900 There Are No Girls on the Internet is a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative.

00:01:18.760 I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet.

00:01:28.440 When it comes to the health of our online landscape, I think it's really important to look at how,

00:01:33.460 and honestly, if, we're able to use our digital communications platforms

00:01:37.560 to communicate with each other about what's going on in the world.

00:01:40.760 So in this episode, I want to look at a few recent cultural happenings

00:01:44.840 and how bots did or didn't sway those conversations.

00:01:49.300 We'll be covering a lot of ground and digging into a lot of research, and we're going to

00:01:53.120 start with Britney Spears.

00:01:55.180 So we have talked about Britney Spears on the podcast before, and I just finished the

00:01:59.580 audiobook of Britney Spears' memoir, The Woman and Me.

00:02:02.760 Now, even if you're someone who does not read a lot of celebrity memoirs, I think this book

00:02:08.260 is still worth a read.

00:02:09.560 Or you could listen to the audiobook narrated by Michelle Williams.

00:02:13.480 At first, I was like, oh, I don't need to read this whole thing.

00:02:16.280 I'll just listen to a recap on a podcast. So I listened to the podcast Celebrity Memoir Book

00:02:21.720 Club about the memoir, and they ended the episode saying, y'all really need to read this book for

00:02:27.100 yourselves. So I did, and they were right. Listening to Britney in her own words was

00:02:32.680 really a different experience. The book is a hit. It sold 1.1 million copies in its first week alone.

00:02:39.520 It's at the top of the New York Times bestseller list, and it is the number two fastest debut of

00:02:44.960 the year, second to Prince Harry's spare. So it is clear people have been waiting to hear what

00:02:50.500 Britney has to say. In the memoir, Britney opens up about some of what we already knew and some

00:02:55.560 that we didn't about her upbringing, her rise to fame, and the horrifying details of her 13-year-long

00:03:01.800 conservatorship. It's one of those memoirs where Britney is pretty gracious in how she reflects

00:03:07.200 on the people in her life who did not treat her well. She has a lot of grace and compassion for

00:03:12.500 people who treated her like absolute garbage. And unfortunately, it sounds like there are a lot 0.94

00:03:18.580 of people like that in her life. Her own family who financially benefited from her conservatorship,

00:03:24.700 media figures who mocked and belittled her, and of course, her ex, Justin Timberlake.

00:03:30.900 In Brittany's memoir, she talks about some of the details of their relationship,

00:03:34.640 including her pregnancy, which she says she terminated after Justin said he was not ready

00:03:39.320 to be a parent. Brittany said in her memoir that she was actually happy about the unplanned

00:03:43.900 pregnancy, but Justin Timberlake was not ready to be a father. She says terminating the pregnancy

00:03:49.340 was, quote, one of the most agonizing things I have ever experienced in my life. On realizing

00:03:54.680 that she was pregnant, she said, it was such a surprise for me, but it wasn't a tragedy.

00:03:59.020 I loved Justin so much, I always expected us to have a family together one day. This would just

00:04:03.960 be much earlier than I anticipated, but Justin definitely was not happy about the pregnancy.

00:04:09.700 He said we weren't ready to have a baby in our lives, that we were way too young.

00:04:13.580 I agreed not to have the baby.

00:04:15.200 I don't know if that was the right decision.

00:04:17.020 If it had been left up to me alone, I never would have done it.

00:04:19.980 And yet, Justin was so sure that he did not want to be a father.

00:04:23.440 Now, to be clear, this is only one detail from a life story filled with so much color,

00:04:29.240 pain, and insight.

00:04:30.520 But it's the detail that I feel like a lot of media outlets have really latched onto,

00:04:35.100 probably because it involves Justin Timberlake.

00:04:38.380 Like, if you've not read the memoir, you probably have seen this one detail about the abortion

00:04:42.660 in headlines about the book, as opposed to all the other details that she shares in the

00:04:47.660 book, like how she recorded and produced her album Blackout during one of the worst years

00:04:52.560 of her life, and she did it in basically one take.

00:04:56.140 Or about how she was almost in the movie adaptation of the Broadway musical Chicago.

00:05:00.920 Boy, did we all miss out on that.

00:05:03.240 Or how she describes her use of Instagram as just this place to have fun and play.

00:05:07.000 Like the book is full of so much rich texture about Britney that it kind of makes me sad that we're really seeing the conversation unfold along the lines of the man in her life.

00:05:17.880 And listen, if you listen to the episode that we did on Janet Jackson or any of the other times where it comes up on the show, you probably already know that I will happily take any opportunity to talk about how much I do not care for Justin Timberlake.

00:05:31.900 but there's so much in this book. I just hate that the online conversation has been dominated by

00:05:36.960 what does Justin think? What is Justin's reaction? What did Justin do? But that has been a big part

00:05:43.460 of the reaction. So after Brittany's memoir was published, it renewed criticism of Justin

00:05:48.700 Timberlake's behavior in their romantic relationship, and especially during that

00:05:52.480 relationship's aftermath. People have been weighing in on social media, and Justin Timberlake actually

00:05:57.280 turned off the comments to his Instagram. So did his wife, Jessica Biel. And people on social media

00:06:03.860 noticed something else unusual online too. On Twitter, several social media users suspiciously

00:06:10.580 used identical language to downplay Britney's revelations about Timberlake and the termination

00:06:15.620 of the pregnancy, all repeating the same line verbatim. Quote, two consenting adults made a

00:06:21.660 joint decision, what was best for them in the period of their lives, I see no issue. This line

00:06:27.540 was shown to have been posted from a few different social media accounts verbatim. So different social

00:06:33.520 media accounts all defending the behavior of an unpopular, fading celebrity using the exact same

00:06:39.860 language? That's suspicious. So this leads to the obvious question. Is someone using inauthentic

00:06:47.240 accounts, sometimes more commonly referred to as social media bots, to manipulate public sentiment

00:06:53.120 around Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake. Oh, so in case you're curious why I'm switching up

00:06:58.060 using the term bots and inauthentic accounts in this conversation, well, it's because social media

00:07:03.140 researchers sometimes use the phrase inauthentic account rather than bots, because bots brings to

00:07:09.040 mind like automated accounts not being run by humans. But sometimes these accounts are actually

00:07:14.560 real people trying to inauthentically coordinate to manipulate public sentiment, hence inauthentic

00:07:20.360 accounts. Okay, but back to Justin and Brittany. So the obvious answer here is that Justin

00:07:25.600 Timberlake's PR team has organized inauthentic accounts to sway the public to be on his side,

00:07:30.700 right? Well, maybe not. The Daily Dot looked into it and found that of the nine accounts

00:07:36.360 on Twitter that repeated the two consenting adults line since October 17th, at least one

00:07:42.220 of them appear to have made the comment as a joke, like a joking use of what is called

00:07:46.920 copypasta, content that is copied, pasted, and repeated online as a joke or a troll.

00:07:52.380 The Daily Dot actually talked to people behind two of the accounts that posted the line.

00:07:56.500 One of them seems to be a clear, self-identified troll who said,

00:08:00.560 I copypasted it.

00:08:02.100 It seemed funny.

00:08:03.360 Another person they spoke to who repeated the two consenting adults line on Twitter

00:08:08.540 is a Justin Timberlake fan account,

00:08:11.480 but they claim to be genuinely copying and pasting the line

00:08:14.380 because they'd seen other Timberlake fan accounts

00:08:16.480 post the same thing,

00:08:17.760 telling the Daily Dot there is no bot campaign,

00:08:20.180 I assure you. 0.88

00:08:21.160 The issue is Britney's fan base 0.51

00:08:22.920 is 10 times the size of Justin's on social media.

00:08:25.840 They're twisting narratives to make things worse for Justin.

00:08:28.640 So to be super clear,

00:08:30.180 there is no evidence that Justin Timberlake

00:08:32.300 or anyone connected to him

00:08:33.600 is directing inauthentic accounts

00:08:35.300 to post in support of him.

00:08:36.880 Also, just a side note,

00:08:38.060 Did you know that last summer, Justin Timberlake danced so badly during a performance at a music

00:08:43.820 festival here in D.C. that he had to issue an apology to the entire city? But I digress.

00:08:49.840 So maybe Justin's team is not behind this social media behavior. But it is curious. You know,

00:08:56.320 other than having a laugh, why would a handful of disparate people on social media all be using

00:09:01.880 the exact same language to talk about Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake? Social media

00:09:07.080 users noticed something similar earlier this summer when actor Jonah Hill was being scrutinized

00:09:12.160 after his ex, surfer Sarah Brady, published text messages that he had sent during their

00:09:16.720 relationship.

00:09:17.680 The texts, to many, including myself, seemed to be using therapy language to manipulate

00:09:22.680 her behavior in some pretty controlling ways that Brady herself categorized as emotionally

00:09:27.940 abusive.

00:09:28.920 The conversation exploded online with people talking about how their exes tried to manipulate

00:09:34.120 and control them.

00:09:35.400 We even made an episode about it.

00:09:37.080 And while all of that was going down, social media users found that accounts were doing the same thing as what we're seeing in the Justin Timberlake Britney Spears situation, repeating a pro-Jonah Hill message on posts about the situation verbatim.

00:09:50.460 The message in question read, quote, it sounds like Jonah Hill is communicating what works for him in a clear way.

00:09:57.160 He literally said he supports her if that brings her happiness.

00:09:59.980 It's just not for him.

00:10:01.140 I actually see nothing wrong with this.

00:10:03.700 So is it just me, or is there something strangely similar about the Timberlake tweets and the Jonah Hill tweets?

00:10:10.500 The way they kind of implore us to see the perspective of the man accused of bad behavior.

00:10:16.180 The way they both end with some version of, I see nothing wrong with this, or I see no issue.

00:10:21.040 They just seem awfully similar.

00:10:24.000 Now, obviously, neither Justin Timberlake or Jonah Hill have said anything about this.

00:10:28.920 And this is where I kind of need to give you a heads up that if you're hoping that there's going to be some kind of like big reveal of some smoking gun in this episode, sadly, there will not be.

00:10:39.600 Even after all the research I did for this episode, I don't feel any closer to knowing what is actually going on with these specific accounts repeating this specific line.

00:10:49.360 You know, did a handful of people all just decide to post the same message for a joke or to create confusion?

00:10:55.180 Is something else going on?

00:10:57.220 I don't know.

00:10:57.800 But the question that I am really curious about is, are we going to see more and more inauthentic social media activity and accounts as a way to shape our opinions?

00:11:07.840 And what does that mean for all of us and for our digital media landscape more broadly?

00:11:12.580 Now, obviously, PR is nothing new.

00:11:15.160 There's an entire lucrative industry built around making us, the public, think about people, brands and campaigns in specific ways.

00:11:23.620 But coordinating people or bots to hijack conversations on social media to inauthentically

00:11:29.640 manipulate public opinion is a very different thing.

00:11:32.960 And if it becomes just another plank of normal ways to do PR and sway public opinion, I think

00:11:39.000 it would be a pretty big sign of this ongoing rot in our digital landscape.

00:11:43.620 So is coordinating the use of inauthentic accounts going to be a more viable and commonplace

00:11:48.040 strategy for brands and companies looking to engage with the public?

00:11:50.720 And do you remember when you could go to the internet to get information to help you understand something without having to worry if some corporate or PR interest was actually just secretly trying to push you toward having their brand-friendly opinion?

00:12:05.420 Like, is everything online just bots, fakes, and scams now?

00:12:10.140 Well, just ask HBO.

00:12:12.740 Because just last week, HBO came under fire for using inauthentic social media accounts to silence critics of their shows.

00:12:20.700 Allegedly, between June 2020 and April 2021, HBO programming chief Casey Bloys and senior vice president of drama programming Kathleen McCaffrey repeatedly discussed using burner social media accounts to directly combat critics of their shows on Twitter.

00:12:36.960 According to Variety, there were at least six different text message exchanges between the two executives that involved floating the idea of using a fake Twitter account to harshly respond to TV critics who gave negative reviews to HBO shows.

00:12:50.740 All of this came to light thanks to a laid-off staffer who used to work on the HBO show The Idol.

00:12:56.100 You remember that show? It was like this terrible, troubled show about the dark side of Hollywood.

00:13:02.980 starring and produced by The Weeknd that was canceled after one short season.

00:13:07.340 The laid-off staffer who worked on that show is suing HBO, the HBO executives,

00:13:12.640 HBO's head of drama, and The Weeknd himself, and two other producers of the show,

00:13:18.040 The Idol, for wrongful termination.

00:13:20.180 So the staffer says that HBO executives asked her to set up fake social media accounts

00:13:24.360 to counter the tweets from professional TV critics.

00:13:27.240 And it kind of looks like that's exactly what might have happened,

00:13:30.100 because in April 2021, a newly created Twitter account from a, quote, Texas mom and herbalist,

00:13:36.980 Kelly Shepard, tweeted in response to Rolling Stone TV critic Alan Sepinwall's negative review

00:13:42.680 of the HBO series The Nevers. This, quote, Texas mom wrote, Alan is always predictably safe and

00:13:50.040 scared in his opinions. And the language from that tweet matches the directions that the HBO

00:13:55.320 executive allegedly texts to the laid-off HBO staffer, and the account's profile picture is

00:14:00.760 just some stock image that is found used on several business websites. That same account

00:14:06.140 was also defending HBO's shows in the comments of entertainment trade publications like Deadline.

00:14:13.220 So a coordinated campaign of inauthentic social media activity to defend

00:14:17.340 bad TV shows from criticism? Like, is this the future of discourse online?

00:14:25.320 Let's take a quick break.

00:14:55.320 And as the number one podcaster, iHeart's twice as large as the next two combined.

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00:15:19.400 When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months.

00:15:24.640 I survived and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed

00:15:30.620 them. I'm Elizabeth Smart and these are the Survivor Files. I just remember this low taunting

00:15:38.160 voice next to my ear saying shut up don't say anything. Every week I'm with survivors who

00:15:45.780 live through the unthinkable. I knew if he woke up without a doubt he was going to hurt me. I

00:15:52.580 I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming.

00:15:59.940 They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.

00:16:03.920 But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.

00:16:07.360 They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.

00:16:10.500 Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:16:22.580 And we're back.

00:16:27.260 We used to think of coordinated and authentic accounts as being used in an attempt to disrupt political discourse and democracy.

00:16:33.500 But now, are they being used to sway public opinion about specific celebrities and even television shows by networks?

00:16:40.300 So if I had to guess, I would say that I think that people in entertainment saw how effective it was to manipulate public sentiment using coordinated social media activity and are toying with using that more generally.

00:16:52.580 And for a great template for how successful this kind of online coordination can be, just look at what happened during the Amber Heard-Johnny Depp defamation trial that stemmed from Heard's op-ed about domestic violence.

00:17:04.160 Bot Sentinel, a research firm that uses data science and artificial intelligence to track and detect bots, trolls, and suspect accounts on Twitter and elsewhere, released a report after the trial focused on how Heard was treated during the trial.

00:17:16.400 The report called the targeting of H.E.R.D. on social media, quote, one of the worst cases of platform manipulation and flagrant abuse from a group of Twitter accounts.

00:17:25.760 So the L.A. Times spoke to Christopher Bouset, CEO of Bot Sentinel, who said,

00:17:29.720 We immediately observed dozens of newly created accounts spamming negative anti-Amber H.E.R.D.'s hashtags.

00:17:36.260 Many accounts were replying to tweets with hashtags unrelated to the tweet they were responding to.

00:17:41.000 Some accounts encouraged others to get the hashtags trending, and the trolls were successful on multiple occasions.

00:17:46.400 So in putting together this report, BotSentinel looked at more than 14,000 tweets that included

00:17:51.120 the hashtags, and it determined that 24.4% of the accounts sending those tweets had been

00:17:56.660 created in the past seven months.

00:17:58.740 So this is where I have to say, I totally got taken by what sounds like some inauthentic

00:18:04.780 social media activity about that trial.

00:18:07.400 You know, I didn't really pay a ton of attention to the trial at first.

00:18:10.800 So then when I decided I wanted to dip in and sort of like get a sense of what was going

00:18:15.560 on, I of course went to social media. And the social media content that I saw was so overwhelmingly

00:18:22.000 negative toward Amber Heard that it was really easy for me to think like, wow, the internet is

00:18:27.240 all collectively against Amber Heard. So she must be in the wrong here. It's really shocking to me

00:18:32.920 how effective it was at shaping my opinion. And yep, Bot Sentinel's report says that copypasta

00:18:39.060 was indeed used in this media manipulation campaign too. The report reads, one manipulative

00:18:45.160 technique that was employed was copypasta, or copying and pasting duplicative content to game

00:18:50.440 Twitter's trends and propagate a positive view of Depp and a negative view of Heard. One such

00:18:55.460 message read, quote, people turned against Amber Heard, not because Johnny Depp is a powerful man

00:19:01.360 or a famous actor, but because we watched the trial and saw who was telling the truth and who

00:19:05.860 wasn't. And again, doesn't this kind of sound similar to the Jonah Hill and Justin Timberlake's

00:19:12.180 tweets, again, we're being asked to negate any of the quote he said, she said, and focus on the

00:19:17.960 perspective of the man accused of bad behavior. I just can't shake how these copy-pasted defenses

00:19:24.340 seem to be inviting us to disregard structures that we know exist, like power dynamics and

00:19:29.940 gender dynamics, to focus on how the man didn't do anything wrong. And they're also framed in this

00:19:36.000 way to look so logical. You know, it's logical to see that Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake were

00:19:42.420 just two consenting adults making the best decisions for themselves. He didn't do anything

00:19:46.900 wrong. It's logical to see that Jonah Hill was just being clear about its boundaries for a partner.

00:19:52.440 He didn't do anything wrong. It's logical to not get blindsided by celebrity or gender dynamics

00:19:57.720 and see that Johnny Depp was simply telling the truth in court. He didn't do anything wrong.

00:20:02.900 It's like they're all framed to invite us to completely disregard everything we spent the last 10 years of Me Too talking about.

00:20:11.040 But again, the question is why?

00:20:12.880 You know, other than someone working on Johnny Depp or Justin Timberlake's PR team, why would anyone want to control our feelings around celebrities or popular culture?

00:20:22.700 Like, what is there to gain?

00:20:24.740 Well, maybe Star Wars can give us a little bit of a clue.

00:20:28.620 Morton Bay, a research fellow at the USC Annenberg School for Communications and Journalism Center for the Digital Future,

00:20:34.820 looked into what appeared to be a massive backlash against the 2017 Star Wars movie The Last Jedi.

00:20:41.240 If you don't remember or you're not a Star Wars person,

00:20:43.300 The Last Jedi was the first Star Wars movie to feature a woman of color in a lead role, Kelly Marie Tran, as Rose Tico.

00:20:50.840 And a small but very vocal minority of people didn't like that.

00:20:54.920 They accused the franchise of, like, forcing diversity and wokeness down their throats or some such nonsense.

00:21:01.840 Rotten Tomatoes confirmed that the film's score was seriously targeted by a coordinated campaign to tank it.

00:21:07.840 Trant faced a slew of gendered and racialized harassment online and eventually left social media.

00:21:13.620 And Morton Bay's research showed that some of that conversation online was driven by Russian bot campaigns and inauthentic accounts.

00:21:20.400 But more interestingly is that according to Vox's Emily St. James, Bayes' study further concludes that much of the backlash was driven by political opportunism from the American alt-right, particularly members of that movement who were deeply involved in 2014's anti-feminist and proto-alt-right Gamergate movement in the video game community.

00:21:41.460 In St. James' piece called Russian Trolls Use Star Wars to Sow Discord Online, the fact that it worked is telling.

00:21:48.920 St. James writes, quote,

00:21:51.140 What Bay's study really got me thinking about was how strange it was that Russian agents would focus on Star Wars, of all things,

00:21:58.220 and what seemed to be a campaign to spread dissension throughout America, dating back to before the 2016 election.

00:22:04.360 Whether or not a Star Wars movie is good or bad has little bearing on the overall twists and turns of global geopolitics.

00:22:10.960 And yet, here was evidence that somebody in Russia sure disagreed.

00:22:14.840 Maybe the Russian bots that Bay identified are all extra-governmental.

00:22:17.880 built by trolls with spare time on their hands and a grudge against Lucasfilms.

00:22:22.120 Or maybe Faye's findings are yet another example of how thoroughly Russian intelligence

00:22:27.000 has zeroed in on the idea that white nationalism is central to driving a wedge in American society. 0.53

00:22:33.280 If the latter is true, then what's most unnerving about Russia's intelligence strategy

00:22:37.540 and its connection to Star Wars isn't what the strategy says about Russia,

00:22:41.820 but what it says about us.

00:22:43.600 So what does it say about us?

00:22:45.460 Well, St. James argues that our political landscape increasingly operates like one big fandom.

00:22:51.800 People are picking teams and being and staying fanatically loyal to those teams as a marker of identity, you know, who they are in the world.

00:22:59.760 And we already know that using identity and our anxieties and hangups and fears that are rooted in identity has always been one of the most effective ways to cause disruption and manipulate people.

00:23:10.120 So to be super clear, I am not suggesting that there is a foreign campaign to get us to think favorably about a fading pop star like Justin Timberlake.

00:23:19.060 It's concerning, not to mention really telling, that popular culture, you know, the music we like, the celebrities we follow, the films we identify with, is becoming just another domain to spread chaos and division.

00:23:32.240 But it also kind of makes sense.

00:23:34.920 Because the content we consume is so often tied with our identities.

00:23:38.560 But I do think that if identity-based conversations online like these are artificially manipulated, it does leave us more polarized and more susceptible to being manipulated along highly charged tension points for more nefarious political causes where the stakes are a whole lot higher.

00:23:58.200 More after a quick break.

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00:24:21.660 about podcasting think again more americans listen to podcasts than ad supported streaming

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00:24:41.440 think iheart streaming radio and podcasting call 844-844-iheart to get started that's 844-844-iheart

00:24:50.260 if your bookshelf and your for you page are equally important to your personality welcome home

00:24:56.440 This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.

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00:25:48.120 See you between the pages.

00:25:55.620 Let's get right back into it. 0.66

00:25:58.300 We talked before about inauthentic social media accounts trying to spread chaos in the 2016 elections targeting Black and brown voters.

00:26:06.760 Well, we're already seeing inauthentic accounts being used ahead of the 2024 presidential election, too.

00:26:12.440 Gizmodo published a detailed report about a Twitter bot campaign

00:26:15.400 using research from the digital analytics firm Siabra.

00:26:19.260 Siabra uncovered a bot-run pro-Trump campaign.

00:26:22.640 The bot farm was created within the last 11 months solely to heap praise on Trump

00:26:26.560 while ridiculing his potential political opponents,

00:26:29.480 especially those likely to challenge him in 2024.

00:26:32.440 According to Siabra researchers,

00:26:33.660 a regular conversation on sites like Facebook or Twitter

00:26:36.740 will usually attract between 4% and 8% of fake accounts.

00:26:41.160 In many of these conversations surrounding Trump, that was up to between 20% and 40%.

00:26:46.560 Over a quarter of the interactions for pro-Trump officials like reps Jim Jordan and Matt Gaetz

00:26:51.500 on Twitter came from bots, according to this report.

00:26:54.700 It is far, far more than left-wing accounts experience like Senator Warren or Representative

00:26:59.680 Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

00:27:01.480 And importantly, for all the talk we do about Russian assets and Russian-run bot campaigns,

00:27:07.380 This bot farm was likely created and being run from right here in the United States.

00:27:12.200 The company researchers found that there were three massive bot farms established in April, October, and November of last year.

00:27:18.300 These interconnected bot farms were likely created in the United States.

00:27:21.960 What's more, all these fake accounts were extremely pro-Trump and attacked anybody who made negative mention of the former president.

00:27:28.400 So that's a lot. But how effective are these bot campaigns really at shaping public opinion?

00:27:33.800 it's actually kind of hard to say and also kind of in dispute.

00:27:37.520 First, it's really hard for researchers to get any kind of clear consensus about bot activity on social media sites,

00:27:43.860 especially now that Twitter has blocked access to the API.

00:27:47.500 It's harder than ever for researchers to get a look into the back end to make any kind of assessment about what's happening on the site.

00:27:53.820 According to research from Dahoud Zaman, associate professor of operations management at MIT,

00:27:58.740 even a small handful of bots can have an impact on shaping public opinion.

00:28:03.340 His research found that a small number of highly active bots can significantly change

00:28:07.400 people's political opinions.

00:28:09.000 The main factor was not how many bots were used, but rather how many tweets each set

00:28:13.860 of bots issued.

00:28:15.080 But there is some research to suggest that the concern about bots' impact on our behavior

00:28:19.440 is overblown.

00:28:21.220 Despite the presence of Russian bots trying to disrupt the 2016 election, there is some

00:28:25.840 research suggesting that maybe it wasn't all that effective in actually changing American

00:28:30.120 voting behavior.

00:28:31.380 But here's the interesting thing.

00:28:33.400 When inauthentic accounts and bots are used to shape discourse in these clandestine ways

00:28:37.880 at all, it has an impact whether we're doing the thing the bot campaign is trying to get

00:28:42.960 us to do or not.

00:28:44.360 That's because the knowledge that there could be bots out there manipulating conversations

00:28:48.580 online is enough to make us change our behavior and shape the way that we do discourse online.

00:28:54.400 According to a study by Adam Waits, a professor of management and organizations at the Kellogg

00:28:58.640 school, people are more likely to assume that posts that they don't agree with are from bots,

00:29:03.820 not from real people. So if there are bots being deployed in discourse online at all,

00:29:08.960 it kind of doesn't matter if the content that we're seeing is being driven by bots or not.

00:29:13.580 When people believe they are interacting with a bot, they trust online discourse less and show

00:29:18.420 less willingness to engage with it, one of the reports researchers said. Viewed alongside earlier

00:29:23.820 studies, which show that people perceived opposing views as more bot-like, the results of this

00:29:28.600 experiment suggest that the political bias may contribute to markers of political polarization.

00:29:34.360 One of the researchers on this study says that the research suggests just how deep American

00:29:38.880 partisan divides go, saying, I was surprised by how consistently this bias emerged. People are

00:29:44.660 very quick to dismiss other viewpoints as not only incorrect, but also as not even human.

00:29:51.160 And our current conversation around bots might not actually even be helpful.

00:29:57.420 Waits, the author of the study, said that belief that bot accounts are widespread may have the effect of poisoning the well and making all online content seem suspect.

00:30:07.140 The research, he says, does make me wonder whether all the hype around bots might actually have a more damaging effect or more biasing effects than the bots themselves.

00:30:17.020 So it's kind of like a double-edged sword

00:30:19.080 because people should be aware of the reality

00:30:21.880 that there are bots out there

00:30:23.240 trying to hijack conversations online.

00:30:26.220 But that reality could also shape the way people see

00:30:29.560 and engage in discourse

00:30:30.640 in ways that make us all more polarized and less informed.

00:30:34.220 And that is an outcome

00:30:35.120 that could have very big impacts on our democracy,

00:30:38.100 which is probably why the HBOs of the world

00:30:40.340 should maybe think twice

00:30:41.780 before using inauthentic accounts

00:30:43.520 just to make their bad TV shows look more well-liked.

00:30:46.340 because they might think they're just making it seem like people,

00:30:50.220 like our Texas herbalist mom, Kelly Shepard,

00:30:53.800 are just really going to bed and defending their programming.

00:30:56.780 But in actuality, they're making all of us trust online discourse

00:31:00.220 and in turn each other less.

00:31:02.780 And I'm sad to say that none of this shows any signs of slowing down anytime soon.

00:31:07.580 In fact, kind of the opposite.

00:31:09.560 And even though Elon Musk pledged to crack down on bots on Twitter,

00:31:13.920 You might remember that he even tried to use the prevalence of bots to weasel out of the

00:31:17.980 sale way back when, and is now even floating the idea of having people pay to use Twitter

00:31:22.820 to curb bots.

00:31:24.080 The problem has actually gotten worse under his tenure as the owner of Twitter.

00:31:28.200 And it really does not sound like his team is doing a whole lot to fix it.

00:31:31.940 A team of researchers at Queensland University of Technology who tracked misinformation and

00:31:36.620 bot activity on social media for several years, including until Musk took over, found that

00:31:41.220 automated, inauthentic social media accounts, so like really bots, bots, remained active on the

00:31:47.520 platform long after their research had discovered them, showing that Twitter has just not really

00:31:52.460 been effective at suspending bot accounts. And with the rise of technology like AI,

00:31:58.460 this is all poised to get a lot worse because AI-powered bots can look and sound more and more

00:32:03.680 like authentic humans. So what's at stake with all this? Like, why does any of this matter?

00:32:08.860 Well, I think the reason I get so up in arms about this is that at the most basic level,

00:32:14.740 people ought to be able to trust that the conversations they're having online are authentic.

00:32:18.880 Whether they're about celebrities like Britney Spears and the failed actors like Justin

00:32:23.200 Timberlake they end up having relationships with, or about who you should be voting for

00:32:27.600 and why.

00:32:28.720 We should be able to turn to our biggest social media platforms to get accurate, thoughtful

00:32:33.400 content and information from humans.

00:32:36.780 Otherwise, what is the point?

00:32:38.140 When you get on social media, especially if you're trying to form an opinion about something that is complicated or complex or nuanced, you should be able to do that without interference by bots secretly trying to push you to think a certain way.

00:32:51.140 And I think it is related to this overall feeling that more and more of the internet is just a landscape or a marketplace for scams and bots.

00:33:00.240 Like what happened to an internet that is actually based on community building and accurate information sharing?

00:33:06.080 And I think increasingly the ultimate why of inauthentic accounts and bot campaigns might not necessarily just to be to change our behavior and sway our opinions, but to keep us fearful and distrustful of one another.

00:33:21.340 You know, if we're all accusing each other of not just being misinformed or wrong, but not even being human, it's like I don't have to listen to what you think or engage you or try to understand your perspective if you're just a bot.

00:33:34.060 I think it's just another way to keep us divided, and thus, easier to manipulate.

00:33:39.540 And ultimately, we all lose out if the internet becomes just another place to manipulate us,

00:33:45.180 divide us, and keep us polarized.

00:33:52.900 Got a story about an interesting thing in tech, or just want to say hi?

00:33:56.260 You can reach us at hello at tangody.com.

00:33:58.680 You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangody.com.

00:34:02.160 There Are No Girls on the Internet was created by me, Bridget Todd.

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There Are No Girls on the Internet - November 08, 2023

Britney Spears released a hit memoir. Are bots shaping the conversation？

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