Vanquishing the Trolls

Social media trolls are committed to division, fostering distrust and spreading misinformation. Action should be taken immediately because simply put, social media is making the world a more hateful place. The social media army of trolls include bots, fake accounts and real people behaving badly.

Social media companies should be compelled to spend some of their vast fortunes identifying, removing trolls, bots, and fake accounts. What is a social media troll? An account that exists to offend and sow conflict by posting divisive, misleading and offensive comments. Like the playground bully, the goal is to elicit a reaction or provoke responses to fuel a race to the bottom. And worse, fake accounts troll others without any consequences.

Bots and fake accounts may make off-topic comments unrelated to a particular post. They may post the same or similar comments to multiple posts looking for reactions. Trolls love their memes and gifs, and the comments of fake account and bots are rarely productive.

To further identify trolls and bots, look for profiles without any personal photographs, information or original posts. Bots and fake accounts may not have a personalized profile picture, but rather stock images. Look for a surprising lack of followers or connections. If an account is consistently posted about the same thing or simply sharing content about similar topics, it may be a fake account.  These can be telltale signs of fake accounts, trolls and bots.

The exact number of social media bots isn’t known, but it’s estimated that they make up between 5% and 15% of accounts.¹ Because many people confuse bots with real users and there are so many roaming social media platforms, their risk of causing chaos and division cannot be understated. Fighting back and exposing bots and fake accounts is crucial. Block the trolls that post on your page. While engaging serious people who have legitimate disagreements can be constructive, engaging with trolls only provides them with a bigger platform. And you will not change the mind of a bot.

Report trolls, bots and bullies but not those who you disagree with. Social media can be a tremendous medium to engage in policy and political discussions, to obtain information and when appropriately, to respectfully disagree. However, if a fake account or troll appropriates your feeds to spread misinformation and hate, report them.

We must also demand that social media companies make meaningful efforts to control the use of bots and fake accounts on their page. The days of the social media wild west must end.

Sources

1. Varol, Onur, et al. “Online Human-Bot Interactions: Detection, Estimation, and Characterization.” Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media, vol. 11, no. 1, May 2017, pp. 280–89, https://doi.org/10.1609/icwsm.v11i1.14871. ↩︎

About the author

Elliot Richardson

Elliot Richardson is the CEO and Co-Founder of Run Down the Middle (RDM), an evidence-based public policy and civic education and engagement platform built to help galvanize Americans searching for a better political environment and real policy solutions. An attorney and longtime public policy advocate, Elliot has spent his career bringing together business owners, advocates, policymakers and community leaders to advance practical solutions. He is also the Co-Founder and President of the Small Business Advocacy Council (SBAC), writes a monthly column for the Daily Herald and has been interviewed by numerous different media outlets. Through RDM, Elliot works to break down complex policy issues, elevate our political discourse, encourage more constructive civic participation and galvanize people around solutions.