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Comment by lemiffe | Hacker News Reader

> The worry is that all the online chatter about cannabis’s beneficial qualities will have offline consequences, ultimately influencing attitudes and behaviors, Allem said

I doubt this is a realistic consequence... I mean, who is following these bots? Would people really listen to a bot? I presume most people would be able to tell bot-controlled Twitter accounts from friends and legitimate followers.

I think the study should have included impact from those tweets, such as number of likes, retweets, quotes, and replies, as well as count of human followers.

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> I doubt this is a realistic consequence... I mean, who is following these bots? Would people really listen to a bot?

I'm not sure if you're serious, but misinformation in general is a big global concern that has tangible, unexpected and sometimes coordinated effects on political and social systems worldwide.

When misinformation becomes cheap to produce with software and easy to distribute via social media, and sophisticated enough to be indistinguishable from a real person, a) it's very difficult for an outsider to know whether they're being misinformed, and b) does it really matter if it's a human or a bot spreading it at that point?

I'm not sure what the short term solutions to this are, as it's easy to fall into the regulations trap (and some certainly are needed), but in the long term we need better educated individuals with a healthy dose of skepticism to combat this.

You’re right that further research is required here but it’s also worth barring in mind that there is already a good body of evidence available that supports the power of social media bot accounts have public opinion. I mean this isn’t the first story like this to break in recent years ;)

> I mean, who is following these bots? Would people really listen to a bot?

It certainly helped get Trump elected

Is there any actual evidence of this? I’ve heard that claim, but it seems like most trump voters were Republicans, not democrats who got duped by bots.

To be fair, that "certain" fact is wildly disputed. It's like the political equivalent of "reefer madness" in that it's easy to throw around, yet hard to quantify or present as a valid case for/against.

I mean, look at the absolute circus a controversial point such as "how did Trump get elected" has caused in the US and even world-wide. We're nearing the next election and I would argue it's still no where near resolved. In fact, I'd argue it's caused a bigger divide than anything else precisely because it's so un-pinnable to being either true/false or good/bad.

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