If you’re one of the many people who enjoy twitter feeds or even the comments section at your favourite news websites, then you may already be well aware that some of the contributors aren’t exactly sitting or standing somewhere with a mobile device or notebook in front of them like you are. What we’re talking about here is ‘Bots’ and by that’s what means is an fabricated identity created in the digital space and armed with AI to be able to participate in convos and the like to further the interests of whatever interest group might be behind them. ‘Russian’ bots are the flavour of the years these days, and it’s believed that many of these non-animate opinion swayers come from Russia. Truth is, however, bots come from all over the place and these days they are all too commonplace. And they’re likely not going away anytime soon, so it’s good to know what these bots are, what they get up to, and – perhaps most importantly – how you can identify bots and put a whole lot less significance on what they have to say. Now it needs to be said that here at 4GoodHosting we’re like any other reputable Canadian web hosting provider in that we’ve never created a bot, and in truth despite our familiarity with all things web hosting we wouldn’t even know how to even if we tried. We imagine that’s there are at least a few of out web hosting customers in Canada who have these malevolent means, but that’s neither here nor there. Let’s spend today talking about what everyday, average individuals like you can actually do to distinguish between a bot and a legit, human contributor. Looks and Sounds Legit, But… Sophisticated bots look and act like human users, and it’s true that most bot activity indistinguishable from human activity to the naked eye. Even the majority of bot detection software struggles with being able to identify the entirety of them. This is a problem, and here’s why – with the ability to look like a million different humans at any time you could do a lot that wouldn’t be possible if...
