Most Americans say they can’t tell the difference between a social media bot and a human
Most Americans say they can’t tell social media bots from real humans, and most are convinced bots are bad, according to a new study from Pew Research Center. Only 47 percent of Americans are somewhat confident they can identify social media bots from real humans. In contrast, most Americans surveyed in a study about fake news were confident they could identify false stories.
The Pew study is an uncommon look at what the average person thinks about these automated accounts that plague social media platforms. After surveying over 4,500 adults in the US, Pew found that most people actually don’t know much about bots. Two-thirds of Americans have at least heard of social media bots, but only 16 percent say they’ve heard a lot about them,...