A “bot”, in the broadest sense, is any computer program built to perform automated tasks. While bots can be embodied in, and control, actual robots, most of them are not and work merely as a software or application on a computer or computing device. The application in charge of making your digital clock update the time on the screen every minute would constitute a bot in this sense, as it merely involves a repetitive, automated task (i.e. changing numbers on the screen). A subset of bots called “internet bots” are automated programs which operate online (for instance, gathering information about visitors on websites); and a further subset of these, called “social bots”, operate on social media platform such as Twitter. These bots are programmed to run on, or control, their own social media profiles (identical to the ones you and I would have) and their tasks are of the social media type: posting messages, “liking” other posts, “following” individuals, and so on. While some of them are transparently bot-like (e.g. profiles programmed merely to share statistics about each vote in the U.S. Congress), others are designed to mimic human behaviour and to be perceived as genuine. Hence, the content of their messages, the patterns of posting, etc. are close to ours: emotional and personal, containing opinionated beliefs, and jumping castle so on.
Within this latter category of social media bots, we find the bots that are the main focus of the present paper. The term “political bots” refer to human-looking social media bots with a clear political aim: to influence political discussions and opinions. For simplicity, I will refer to these bots as “polibots”. The use of these bots have increased in recent years. According to some estimates, polibots produced almost 20% of all election-related tweets on Twitter a few weeks prior to the election day of the last U.S. presidential election.1 Researchers and others warn us that the use of polibots will only increase around the world.2 As more and more people turn to social media to discuss politics, and use social media as an information source, these platforms are increasingly being dominated by hordes of bots that try to influence opinions. This evolution has attracted academic and political interest from many3, but few philosophers have engaged with the topic. With this paper, therefore, I hope to start a philosophical discussion about this topic by investigating the ethics of using polibots.