It appears that governments are using bot networks to influence the conversation on social media.
The University of Maryland researcher, David Kirsch, and his associate, Mohsen Chowdhury, discovered something odd while researching the social media footprint of the electric car maker.
When the stock of the electric vehicle maker plummeted following reports of a fire in one of its Model S sedans, they found that eight accounts that had been created within minutes of each other began posting a bunch of positive messages about the company. The stock rebounded amazingly.
They say that the eight accounts and others that appeared afterwards did not match the patterns of human posting.
In research that will be presented at conferences later this year, Kirsch and Chowdhury outline their findings, which show that between 2010 and 2020 there were over one million tweets from the 400 top accounts.
Futurism sat down with Kirsch to hear more. The conversation has been edited for clarity.
Give us an elevator pitch for your research.
We found weird accounts that did not look like normal accounts when we looked at every single one of the #TSLA accounts.
I've heard of political bots, but I've never seen anything that serves a corporate purpose. All of a sudden, it made sense.
We theorize the importance of narrative in the book I wrote about bubbles and crashes. When the stock was going down, it was clear that there was negative sentiment around it, and negative momentum. They launched a bunch of these bots, and after a while, they would start posting positive content about the company, and the stock would recover.
What are your theories about what is happening with these bots?
The weird part is that we don't have a mechanism to figure out what's going on. Guessing what was going on is all we can do. Maybe these accounts are for retail investors. Maybe they would act in a certain way if they saw the positive content or the TSLA hash tag.
One theory is that the bots were used to signal other actors to make other kinds of trades, like buy options or do weird things.
We don't have a theory right now, but it is happening. The fact that it is happening raises more questions than it answers. Who was doing this? Who was paying for it? Who was in charge of it?
I don't want anyone to think I'm saying all Musk's followers are fake. He has a lot of followers. The scale of his following and the intensity of their attachment to his ambitions can be aligned by this kind of bot activity.
They already think that he is saving the world and doing great things, and that he is Iron Man. They are more vulnerable to this kind of content. I don't think a typical CEO would hire a bunch of bots.
The big question now is whether he will crack down on bots like he promised to do. What do you think about that?
It would be ironic for Musk to try to limit the use ofTwitter bots by others, since he may have benefited from the use of them in support of theTesla stock narrative. I think that it may have helped him, but this is now. It is pretty rich. I think that Musk wants to make sure that he can continue to use Twitter in the way that he wants to, but I don't think he's concerned with principles.
The biggest concern for me is the shareholders of the company. I can't see how this will benefit an average shareholder, the CEO will be distracted and his shares pledged to secure a loan that will affect the financial structure of the firm. It tells us what we can expect from him when he is the sole owner of a company and doesn't have a dog board to manage.
If you could ask an omnipotent power one question about this situation, what would it be?
Who is behind it is the biggest question for me. How closely were they watching the activity and the consequences of the content they were creating?
There is a theory that says the bots were a response to negative media attention. They were supposed to turn the tide.
The other view is that they are an insurance policy. It could be that they didn't know if they were doing anything. They may have thought that throwing salt over your shoulder could hurt. All the other car companies have to pay for ad sales, but that's 8 percent of the total cost. It might be a cheap insurance policy.
Do you think it's illegal to hire these types of bots? Do you think it's unethical?
In general, I think you should tell the truth about what you do. I think it's a little problematic that there's no transparency around these kinds of actions.
Everyone has an equal playing field when it comes to information. I think it's problematic if people are manipulating the information landscape.
Do you think this has had an effect on the stock?
The other day, I talked to someone and asked them the trillion dollar question.
I may never be able to prove it, because I can't do it right now. There is a chance thatTesla is a failed startup and that it is a trillion dollar company.
There are a lot of possible explanations that could be used in that statement. We need to take that possibility seriously. There is a chance that the fan bots played a role.
The person was skimming the trees. It looked like it might fall. We have to take that possibility seriously if the bots kept the stock solvent, kept the story going, and kept it from collapsing.
There is more on that other big story.
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