This is an accurate analysis of the prevailing sentiment. But I think people think about it wrong. Sure, bits devalue a platform for an end user. But so do ads, and we see those are ubiquitous as well. We are basically trained as consumers to accept the presence of ads over time. Meanwhile, the strategy with bots seems to be to make them harder to detect rather than more expected. Twitter must understand that part of its value to the owning class is its ability to make bottling just difficult enough that those who are able to do it must pay a premium for it. Therefore they gatekeep their bots to be primarily for the wealthy.
And honestly, the short format of tweets and the fact that there are so many genuine users whose use of language isn’t traditionally fluent makes it harder for the average user to detect NLG. I mean no offense to anyone who speaks a second language or isn’t literate by classist standards. It’s just that a lot of relevant research involves telling subjects things like, “your conversation partner is a Russian child who speaks English as a second language”. It allows people to broadly dismiss grammatical errors and focus on the “content” of what is being said. And it works a pretty large amount of the time
But I think people think about it wrong.
Yea, I agree. I think in general most people have a pretty flat analysis of the dynamics actually at play. For one, I’m not sure a bunch of bots truly do devalue a platform at all, especially when they cannot be ascertained to definitely be bots by users. On the contrary, the fact that people spend money to increase their follower count or boost a new release on the algorithm or whatever - - it shows how much value people place on success within these godforsaken platforms and also how much real (and imagined) economic opportunity these platforms offer in turn (or at least promise) for this success. Really, a value-less platform is the one that nobody bots on lol
