Companies Going To War On Social Media

An increasing number of fraudulent companies are using bots and or fake accounts to run damaging propaganda campaigns against their competitors on social media, according to Lyric Jain, the chief executive of Logically, a British high-tech monitoring firm that uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) software to search social media platforms, including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok to find fake news and other disinformation.

Jain says we appear to be “on the cusp of an era” of businesses spreading lies about rivals on social media. Fake information is increasing on social media and many people share an article that they think is true only to discover that it is false and often outdated. 

Jain created his business in 2017, and while its main customers are the British, American and Indian governments, as well as by some leading retail brands, who are asking for help to protect themselves from malicious attacks by rivals. "We are seeing that some of the same practices that have been deployed by nation state actors, like Russia and China, in social media influence operations, are now being adopted by some more unscrupulous competitors of some of the main Fortune 500 and FTSE 100 companies... Attackers are trying to use similar tactics to essentially go to war against them on social media." he said.

One example of fictitious claims includes numerous assertions that 5G mobile networks cause cancer, or even COVID-19, despite there being no scientific evidence to support this claim. This theory is held to be misinformation, because it presents incorrect and out-of-context information as fact.

The main idea behind this false claim is that 5G radio waves are harmful to the brain and cause health issues likes autism or cancer. However, experts have rejected this claim, explaining that 5G radio waves cannot damage the DNA in our cells, nor can they even penetrate past the skin, which acts as a protective barrier.

Jain says that a main attack tactic is the use of fake accounts to "deceptively spread and artificially amplify" negative product or service reviews, both real or made up. In addition, the bots can be used to damage a competitor's wider reputation.

For example, if a retailer has disappointing financial results in a certain three-month period, then an unscrupulous competitor can try to exaggerate their rival's financial woes.

Another British firm that uses AI to monitor social media for misinformation and misinformation on the part of the company’s customers is Factmata, who take a different approach. Its chief executive, Antony Cousins, says that while it can involve humans in surveillance work, AI can be more objective if customers request them. “Our real aim is not to put any human being between AI and the results, or else we risk applying our own biases to the conclusions,” he says. In particular, Cousins says that Factmata’s AI is able to differentiate between lies and satire and humor.

Using technology to combat fake news on social media is a complex issue, says Professor Sandra Wachter, Senior Research Fellow at the at Oxford University's Internet Institute, who says that some humans can also struggle to identify humor. “Given the prevalence and amount of false information and misinformation spreading across the web, it is absolutely understandable that we turn to technologies like AI to tackle this problem,” she says. “AI can be a viable solution to that problem if we have an agreement on what makes counterfeit information removable from the web. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get farther from finding alignment on this.

“Is this content fake or real? What if it’s my opinion? What if it was a joke? And who decides? How should an algorithm deal with it if we humans can’t even agree on the issue. ?”

“In addition, there are many subtleties and nuances in human language that algorithms, and in many cases humans, may not be able to detect. For example research shows that algorithms as well as humans are only able to detect sarcasm and sarcasm 60% of the time.” Wachter commented.

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