{"id":7157,"date":"2016-11-18T06:47:45","date_gmt":"2016-11-18T12:47:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=7157"},"modified":"2016-11-18T06:47:45","modified_gmt":"2016-11-18T12:47:45","slug":"on-political-bots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=7157","title":{"rendered":"On political bots"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><A href=\"http:\/\/wordpress.us11.list-manage.com\/track\/click?u=4c05517f80432a9d59ecf8013&#038;id=b8eb9e0735&#038;e=ac42ab4dc0\">John Markoff<\/a> <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>An automated army of pro-Donald J. Trump chatbots overwhelmed similar programs supporting Hillary Clinton five to one in the days leading up to the presidential election, according to a report published Thursday by researchers at Oxford University.<br \/>&nbsp;<br \/>&nbsp;The chatbots \u2014 basic software programs with a bit of artificial intelligence and rudimentary communication skills \u2014 would send messages on Twitter based on a topic, usually defined on the social network by a word preceded by a hashtag symbol, like #Clinton.<br \/>&nbsp;<br \/>&nbsp;Their purpose: to rant, confuse people on facts, or simply muddy discussions, said Philip N. Howard, a sociologist at the Oxford Internet Institute and one of the authors of the report. If you were looking for a real debate of the issues, you weren\u2019t going to find it with a chatbot.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p> Related: <A href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/features\/2015-click-fraud\/\">Fake web traffic<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>John Markoff An automated army of pro-Donald J. Trump chatbots overwhelmed similar programs supporting Hillary Clinton five to one in the days leading up to the presidential election, according to a report published Thursday by researchers at Oxford University.&nbsp;&nbsp;The chatbots \u2014 basic software programs with a bit of artificial intelligence and rudimentary communication skills \u2014 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7157"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7157"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7157\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7158,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7157\/revisions\/7158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}