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Comment by sneak | Hacker News Reader

All Twitter accounts are run by humans using software.

This idea that there are “bot” accounts and “real” accounts is nonsense. Until AGI can create its own account, every account on Twitter is some real person posting, via some form of software.

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The term "bot" isn't something created by Twitter. Bot's have been discussed from IRC to web forums and it's been universally agreed that someone a human interacting with the service (which will always be via software because we're not talking about physical communications here) is different from a headless script posting either generated or curated content automatically.

Sure, there will be some nuances where it's not so clear cut. But to say that there is no such concept of a "bot" is ridiculously misinformed about any of tech released in the last 30 years of electronic communication.

Humans make very good script engines, too. If you need to put out a script but vary it to get past simple algorithmic spam filtering, you can't beat running it through a good hardworking human who can type real fast and think on the fly. That human's doing the job of a bot, for all practical purposes: 'bot' is a job description, and humans can easily outperform computers for some bot purposes.

For now :)

This is some kind of weird reductio ad absurdum nonsense.

You, sneak, are not that stupid. I've seen you posting before. I know you're not.

So honestly: What exactly are you trying to get at, here?

My point: this is just another form of Twitter's escalating censorship. I was speaking obliquely because I repeat the phrase "Twitter censorship" far too often these days. :(

All of these "bot" accounts belong to a human being, and these human beings are posting on purpose (via their bot software).

I don’t think this kind of response is good for hacker news. It’s just rudeness masked by being patronising.

The original comment by sneak was seemingly deliberately obtuse, which it itself a form of rudeness.

Yes. But as dang says every so often, don't reply to a bad comment with another bad comment. This "I know you're not that stupid" thing is obviously not necessary. Leave that out and we wouldn't be having this conversation about what's acceptable and what's not.

That's a good point. That said, 'I know you're not that stupid' is one way of addressing a concern: it's a more humanized, more personal way of calling out a significant criticism that's worth making.

Another would be, "It looks like you are trying to plant the assumption that there are no possible Twitter users serving as puppets directed by others. Taking your statement at face value with best faith interpretation would lead to abandoning the whole discussion and trusting whatever goes on at Twitter to be just plain organic population, but we're pretty sure that's not the case. Why are you making statements that strongly suggest all of Twitter is just organic userbase, and minimizing the very thing we're talking about? We're literally talking about bots here.'

That's a lot wordier than 'I know you're not that stupid', and a lot less personal. Is it better? In some ways it implies the bot-minimizer is actively taking a role as a bad actor, not merely being foolish. I think such actors exist and also post on Hacker News and more or less everywhere else, but it's a nastier accusation and 'you're not that stupid, so what gives?' is a much gentler way of addressing it.

Especially when talking about use of, and restraint of, social media bot networks (AS THE PRIMARY TOPIC, I might add), we have to be able to talk about good faith and bad faith. It's literally the point of the whole discussion.

It's neither rude nor patronising. The guy isn't an idiot, and I'm genuinely curious about what he thinks -- I don't think I know better than him, I think he has made a rash comment.

Taking your comment in good faith, there are already a set of rules with regards to automation on twitter [0] which might help in understanding their usage of the word "bot" in that context.

0: https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/twitter-autom...

Your definition of bot account differs from the actual, there is no requirement for AI. A bot account posts based on an automated script.

If i were to use your definition, is the account created by an AGI not the same? The AGI, as with the automated script, was made by a person.

Consider chess. How much can I claim that "I won the chess championship" if I use stockfish to play in my stead? True, in a pedantic fashion, I am the one who booted stockfish up so in a way I contributed to my matches, but this isn't a measurement of my chess skill. I cannot claim that I am good at chess because I hired someone else to play for me, and the same is true when I relegate my options to an artificial intelligence.

Now take that into Twitter context. Can you claim that "I am a good tweet author" when I'm not the one who decides what's written on my feed but someone else? Can you even claim that you interacted with me personally at all?

Microsoft's chatbot that started racist talk.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/in-2016-microsofts-racist-chatbot-...

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