I don't know the answer, but I suspect that if we can actually "solve" this problem it will happen via relatively dramatic regulatory change. Possible examples:
- Repealing Section 230[1]: so that social media (and others) are treated as publishers and legally liable for user-generated content (including Bot content).
- Banning surveillance capitalism: easier to say than to do, but the basic idea would be to pass right to privacy laws prohibiting tracking, profiling, etc. This would indirectly help against the bot-content tsunami by making it less profitable.
- Banning algorithmic feeds: related to the Section 230 idea, you could have things like an HN feed where everyone sees the same site and content, but not a twitter feed where everyone sees whatever the "recommendation engine" suggests. This would pretty much kill the bot problem but it would take a lot of the internet with it, because it seems hard to draw a legal line between the Facebook recommendation engine and communication apps like iMessage/WhatsApp, or even apps like Uber that show you a "personalized" view of what cars are available to give you a ride.
All of these ideas will be hard in the US where we have a constitutional right to free speech, and limiting what platforms are allowed to do will turn into a free speech battle.
> ...Repealing Section 230[1]: so that social media (and others) are treated as publishers and legally liable for user-generated content (including Bot content)...
After 2016 or so, i started seeing the topic of "repealing section 230" come up far more often than in the past. And since then, I have wondered if it does get repleaed, might the big social media giants push towards trying to monetize a more decentraliuzed type of social network? In other words, at that point would they leverage networks like the Fediverse and technologies like Mastodon to somehow capture users, but somehow still monetize them in a way that they continue to lack liability...but the users either have legitimate freedom (though still contribute freely to fill social giants purses with revenue), or said users have a false sense of freedom, and really are still beholden to the social media giants...?
- Repealing Section 230[1]: so that social media (and others) are treated as publishers and legally liable for user-generated content (including Bot content).
- Banning surveillance capitalism: easier to say than to do, but the basic idea would be to pass right to privacy laws prohibiting tracking, profiling, etc. This would indirectly help against the bot-content tsunami by making it less profitable.
- Banning algorithmic feeds: related to the Section 230 idea, you could have things like an HN feed where everyone sees the same site and content, but not a twitter feed where everyone sees whatever the "recommendation engine" suggests. This would pretty much kill the bot problem but it would take a lot of the internet with it, because it seems hard to draw a legal line between the Facebook recommendation engine and communication apps like iMessage/WhatsApp, or even apps like Uber that show you a "personalized" view of what cars are available to give you a ride.
All of these ideas will be hard in the US where we have a constitutional right to free speech, and limiting what platforms are allowed to do will turn into a free speech battle.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230