Research is demonstrating that changing the entire narrative on a topic is shockingly easy on social media sites. Sites that claim to be free of such manipulation via user-submitted content and using up\/down vote systems such as\u00a0Reddit are shockingly susceptible.<\/p>\n
In most\u00a0cases, researchers found it only took 1 bot\u00a0casting 3-5 up\/down votes at the right time to change the tone of an entire subreddit for\/against something. Further experiments showed that it only took about $200 to get a completely false story to the front page of Reddit. There is growing evidence that this is already been happening in the Bitcoin\u00a0Reddit forum.<\/p>\n
This is likely not only going to be used by\u00a0advertisers\u00a0but foreign agencies to change the narratives of just about any topic. All of this comes on a budget that is just pennies compared to traditional advertising and military efforts.<\/p>\n
Perhaps this will cause us to come full-circle back to curated media – or for a startup to start a vetting and verification service?<\/p>\n
Either way, the old adage is as true than ever: Don’t believe it just because you read it on the internet. But now we might add: Also don’t believe it just because it gets lots of up\/down votes.<\/p>\n