# web: multitudes under hypothetical conditioning; trolls and bots in social media.

<< Trolls and bots have a huge and often unrecognized influence on social media. They are used to influence conversations for commercial or political reasons. They allow small hidden groups of people to promote information supporting their agenda and a large scale. They can push their content to the top of people’s news feeds, search results, and shopping carts. Some say they can even influence presidential elections. >>

<< Trolls are dangerous online because it’s not always obvious when you are being influenced by them or engaging with them. >>

<< Bots are computer programs posing as people. They can amplify the effect of trolls by engaging or liking their content en masse, or by posting their own content in an automated fashion. They will get more sophisticated and harder to detect in the future. Bots can now create entire paragraphs of text in response to text posts or comments. >>

Jason Skowronski. Trolls and bots are disrupting social media - here’s how AI can stop them (Part 1). Jul 30, 2019.   https://towardsdatascience.com/trolls-and-bots-are-disrupting-social-media-heres-how-ai-can-stop-them-d9b969336a06   

Jason Skowronski. Identifying trolls and bots on Reddit with machine learning (Part 2). Jul 30, 2019.  https://towardsdatascience.com/identifying-trolls-and-bots-on-reddit-with-machine-learning-709da5970af1 

Also

Notes. 2151 - a voting machine (to explain precisely). Jan 15, 2008.   https://inkpi.blogspot.com/2008/01/2151-voting-machine-to-explain.html