Darius Kazemi on The Great Bot Panic
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 2 July 2020
⏱️ 51 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode of our Arbiters of Truth series on disinformation, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Darius Kazemi, an internet artist and bot-maker extraordinaire. Recently, there have been a lot of ominous headlines about bots—including an NPR article stating that nearly 50 percent of all Twitter commentary about the pandemic has been driven by bots rather than human users. That sounds bad—but Darius thinks that we shouldn’t be so worried about bots. In fact, he argues, a great deal of reporting and research on bots is often wrong and actually causes harm by drumming up needless worry and limiting online conversations. So, what is a bot, anyway? Do they unfairly take the blame for the state of things online? And if weeding out bot activity isn’t a simple way to cultivate healthier online spaces, what other options are there for building a less unpleasant internet?
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| 0:00.0 | The following podcast contains advertising to access an ad-free version of the LawFair |
| 0:07.2 | podcast become a material supporter of LawFair at patreon.com slash LawFair. |
| 0:14.7 | That's patreon.com slash LawFair. |
| 0:18.2 | Also, check out LawFair's other podcast offerings, rational security, chatter, LawFair |
| 0:25.6 | no bull and the aftermath. |
| 0:33.9 | There was a study about COVID bots that had data that I could audit and I looked at it so |
| 0:39.1 | many of these bots, yeah, they were technically bots, but it was like my local health clinic |
| 0:45.2 | posts a handwashing PSA every day at noon and that is on an automated timer and that |
| 0:51.1 | is absolutely bot activity. |
| 0:54.0 | But that's just regular community management and marketing from a hospital, right? |
| 1:00.1 | That's not what people think of when they see a headline that says 50% of all highly |
| 1:06.2 | influential accounts about COVID are bots. |
| 1:10.1 | It's like, well, yeah, most of the influential accounts about COVID are from hospitals or |
| 1:14.9 | governments or other institutions that use software tools to augment their social media |
| 1:19.8 | presence. |
| 1:20.8 | I'm Quinted Jurassic and this is the LawFair podcast July 2nd, 2020. |
| 1:31.1 | It's another episode of our Arbitus of Truth series on disinformation. |
| 1:35.4 | This week Evelyn Dwick and I spoke with Derrius Kazemi, an internet artist and botmaker |
| 1:40.0 | extraordinaire. |
| 1:41.6 | Recently, there have been a lot of ominous headlines about bots, including an NPR article stating |
| 1:47.2 | that nearly 50% of all Twitter commentary about the pandemic was driven by bots. |
| 1:52.7 | That sounds bad, but Derrius thinks we shouldn't be so worried about bots. |
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