“Privacy is not an option, and it shouldn’t be the price we accept for just getting on the Internet”
Gary Kovacs, CEO of AVG Technologies
The largest social media platform, Facebook, have shut down 3.3 and 5.4 billion fake accounts in year 2018 and 2019 respectively (Brian Fung, 2019). Although these might seems like a huge numbers, there are still millions of fake account roaming. These fake accounts, known as bots, can greatly affect individual and organisations effectively through positive or negative effects. They can affect political views, ruin business reputation and affect audience mindset about anything.
In this post, I’ll talk about 3 different types of bots used by America social media platform, Twitter and issues on online privacy and online advertising ethics.
Three Types of Bots (Twitter)
Twitter are widely used by many people around the world from celebrities such as Ellen DeGeneres, Kayne West, Beyonce and Justin Bieber to world leaders like Donald Trump and Barack Obama. Not only these people are culture and political influential, a single twitter post by them can greatly affect a individual mindset. Twitter understand these create different types of bots to carry out messages through different channels.
Scheduled Bot – A programmable bot that sends out a messages at a interval of time. This bots create a pulsating effect that creates a constant reminder to the public.
Watcher Bot – a monitoring bot there watches over a account or website and provide immediate relevant information about the changes.
Amplification Bots – These bots helps to boost the messages post online by liking the post, sharing and follow their account.
Privacy
Take a look at your social media platforms now, do you put in personal data such as emails, phone number and residential area? Most of the social media platforms now requires verification information to further confirm that you’re the user, but do you really think it is safe to provide your personal details?
For example, social media platform, Instagram, requires user to take a photo of the front and back photo of your identification card to acknowledge that you’re the actual user of the account to achieve the blue tick verification. Online shopping websites also tend to prompt users to save their payments method to easy checkout the next time.
This data are actually collected and distribute to different advertiser to further target their audience better. This also means that every personal information you share online are technically known to not just the platform you chose to share, but to many different marketers and can potentially be a threat to you.
Data Responsible And Advertising Ethics
With the consent of the users, marketers have to be very careful with the personal information provided. it is important for them to comply and regulate what personal information to be shared and how the advertisers use them.
Marketers should only use sensitive information of the user and understand the channels of communications to the user. This information also have to be accurate and up-to-date. Information should not be kept for longer of time than necessary.
For example, everytime you visit a website for the first time, a file know as ‘cookie’ is downloaded into your computer. This cookie tracks the “digital footprints” of you on the website and tailors what to be shown on the screen for your next visit.
SOUNDS CREEPY RIGHT !?!
Conclusion
In conclusion, users should understand the risk of providing your personal information on any online platforms because what can be convenience to you might be vice versa and used and you. On the other hand, marketers should be very careful with this personal information trusted on them and make suitable and appropriate marketing messages.
Hope you enjoy reading this post and feel free to leave me a comment on your thoughts !
Andrew's Digital Marketing Blog 
Hi Andrew, awesome write-up and interesting read! As a multiple social media platforms user, I do agree that information placed online are really unsafe and in some ways, can be a threat to us. How do you think we can better safeguard our information and things to be aware while sharing information? Do share with me your thoughts, thank you!
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Hi Serena! Thank you so much for taking your time to read my post! Yes, i do feel that having too much personal information on social media platforms can be used against us too! In my opinion, as a user it is important for us to recognize the legitimate of the online platform and understand possible consequences before sharing our personal information. We should also limit the among of information placed on our sites. This way, we can let other users know us better but also protect ourselves and prevent unforeseen circumstances. Thank you!
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Hi Andrew,
Interesting insights on the type of bots. Do you think the bots make lives easier for accounts that have massive amount of notifications an it helps them engage with their real audience during their busy times?
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Hi Melvin,
Thank you for reading my post and hope you enjoy it! I do agreed that sometime bots can be annoying in pushing too much information to users that caused overcrowding of marketing online. However, bots are useful to reach target audience and create a constant reminder to consumers, creating a top of mind awareness (TOMA) effect.
Kind Regards,
Andrew T.
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Do you think that with proper authority on the management of consumer data, it is advisable for consumers to give them to the service providers?
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Hi Guan,
Thank you for reading my post and hope you enjoy it! I would recommend that online users should have better understanding of the possible consequences of having private information shared online. This could serve as convenience to users to better reach others. However, it could also be a threat when online platforms sell your information to third party organisations for marketing purposes.
Kind Regards,
Andrew T.
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