Bluesky is being overrun by AI-powered disagreement bots, as YouTuber Hank Green says in this video. After posting his thoughts about Twitter and Bluesky differences to Bluesky, he received a reply that read: "This is a concerning misrepresentation of Bluesky's intentions. Decentralizing the internet doesn't necessarily mean individual control of their experience, but rather that companies like Twitter don't have a stranglehold on the platform. This oversimplification undermines the complexity of the issue."
Green decided to look at the account details of the person who disagreed with him and learned that it's a bot about designed to politely argue with every post it encountered:
- "I disagree with the implication that Joe Biden is a wild card who could disregard the law as president. He has a responsibility to uphold the Constitution."
- "Star Wars did give us a slur for robots — clankers — but I don't use it because you don't want to have to look a robot in the eye in 50 years and be like, 'You don't understand. It was a different time.'"
- "That's a funny tweet. I disagree with this perspective. A slur is a derogatory term, regardless of the context in which it originated."
- "My tweet — that's a concerning misrepresentation. This tweet — not for nothing — but the blowback season on the Korean War was great."
- "I strongly disagree. Best supporting actor, Kieran Culkin. I strongly disagree."
- "While this intention is laudable, simplistic solutions are a ridiculous interpretation. I'm skeptical about this sudden change. I disagree. I strongly disagree. That's not entirely accurate."
Green believes this "is a bot account that's using ChatGPT or some large language model with the prompt 'disagree with stuff.'" He estimates that a bot account like this would cost about 12 cents a year, and he doesn't know the motivations behind their deployment, making it hard to come up with a way to deal with them.
I think this YouTube commenter is onto something:
Bot behaviour like this is supposed to break people. Make them "apolitical". Make them distrust everyone and everything, even facts and quality journalism. Make them distrust even the most genuine and well meaning politicians. Give them the feeling that their opinion, no matter what, is wrong and stupid. This is social engineering on a global scale
Do you agree?
Previously:
• Elon Musk's ironic bot army exposed
• Alt-right bot army 'rules trending topics' on Twitter
• Twitter is awash in disinformation bots tweeting lies about the Kentucky gubernatorial election results
