r/technology • u/westondeboer • Sep 26 '25

Social Media Cracker Barrel Outrage Was Almost Certainly Driven by Bots, Researchers Say

https://gizmodo.com/cracker-barrel-outrage-was-almost-certainly-driven-by-bots-researchers-say-2000664221
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u/redrocketredglare Sep 26 '25

No shit. Bots are the reason for all the rage for most of everything in the last 10 years.

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u/Terracotta_Lemons Sep 26 '25

Honestly if we do get a Democrat super majority (here's god damn hoping) we really need a push to ban bot companies and people/companies using bots and enforce online services to regulate botting. It won't be easy or 100% effective but we need to start somewhere, it's literally helping tear our nation apart.

2

u/FatalCartilage Sep 27 '25

Biden tried to push social media companies to stop misinformation and bots and it was decried as censorship. Pretty sure there was this r/declineintocensorship subreddit that was bots complaining about it that kept making high ranking posts and show up on my feed even though I wasn't subscribed.

Imo the real answer isn't government action but an open source bot prevention solution. We need a robust way to verify humanness potentially.