If you get your news from Reddit, be careful what you believe. You could be brainwashed by propaganda bots. Sound crazy?
Businesses and organizations may refer to it as a tool for competitive advantage and marketing; but make no mistake, they are using the massive reach of social media and the Internet as a weapon. One U.S. 3-letter special agent said, "You could influence an election with this."
In 2015, we will see the emergence of more automated computational propaganda -- bots using sophisticated artificial intelligence frameworks, removing the need to have humans operate the profiles. Algorithms will not only read the news, but write it...we will also see the first results from initial field tests of the US IARPA (Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity) project to deploy propaganda bots in South America in an attempt to influence local political opinion. We are likely to see versions of these bots deployed on US audiences as part of the 2016 presidential election campaign.
Here is an infographic showing how this works. This image was taken from the Social Media Influence Engine page.
In case anyone is interested, here is a bunch of information on this topic, and here is some more.
