Communication Rights for Social Bots?: Options for the Governance of Automated Computer-Generated Online Identities

Abstract

Social bots, automated agents operating in social networks, are suspected of influencing online debates, opinion-formation processes and thus, the outcome of elections and votes. They do so by contributing to the dissemination of illegal content and disinformation and by jeopardizing an accurate perception of the relevance and popularity of persons, topics, or positions, through their potentially unlimited communication and networking activities, all under the false pretense of human identity. This paper identifies and discusses preventive and repressive governance options for dealing with social bots on state, organizational, and individual levels respecting the constitutional provisions on free expression and opinion-formation.

Not all who are bots are evil: A cross-platform analysis of automated agent governance

“…In theory, policies are equally applicable to human and non-human agents, but in practice governance of the latter is often treated separately (Fox, 2019). Examples of such treatment include obligatory disclosure of agents’ automated nature (Gorwa and Guilbeault, 2020; Pedrazzi and Oehmer, 2020) and specific regulation of agents’ use with the latter being quite inconsistent between different platforms (Maréchal, 2016).…”