How are influencers using bots on their posts, and what exactly do bots do?

[JDX]

How are influencers using bots on their posts, and what exactly do bots do?

 

[Two Time]

Basically, when an account runs on software instead of having an actual person behind the wheel, that's what people mean by a bot.

Imagine somebody sitting on hundreds of social media accounts. Maybe thousands, even. That's a ridiculous number, but enough to seriously influence the engagement numbers that help influencers attract sponsors and earn money.

Now, manually switching between those accounts just to like the same post would be an absolute nightmare. Nobody wants to spend forever logging in, clicking like, logging out, then doing the whole thing again.

That's where automation comes in. With a programming IDE and the necessary API keys, I could theoretically create software that tells every account to like whichever post I choose. Suddenly, those thousands of profiles become bots. Nobody personally operates them anymore. A program decides what they do and when.

So how does this benefit influencers? Depends entirely on what they're trying to achieve.

With sufficiently advanced automation, pretty much anything ordinary users can do becomes possible through bots. Inflating engagement is probably the most obvious example. Think artificial followers, subscribers, likes, upvotes, and whatever other numbers make an account look popular.

But it goes beyond numbers. Imagine automated accounts having conversations among themselves, creating the illusion that loads of people are actively participating.

Or picture dozens of supposedly independent users agreeing with the same opinion. Suddenly, something looks widely accepted even though the agreement isn't genuine.

Fake testimonials work similarly. Those glowing endorsements can say precisely what someone wants potential customers to hear, regardless of whether any of it actually happened.

Ultimately, the boundaries come down to someone's coding ability and how comfortable they are breaking platform terms of service.