The Spread of Fake News by Social Bots: Perspectives on Social Bot Regulation

Social bots are considered a key element in spreading fake news. However, there are no more than estimations regarding the actual dimension of their impacts on social media. This is due to their identification problem, i.e., the impossibility of detecting them. Since any regulation attempt must first overcome this lack of data, the present paper aims to analyze the different approaches to solving the social bots’ identification problem. To do so, it first defined social bots and, subsequently, discussed their threats. Later, it critically described the current solution proposals, dividing them into three groups: the technical approaches, the mandatory-label policy model, and the real-name policy model. After recognizing that only the last group is suitable to surpass the identification problem, the paper has shifted its focus to finding a milder and less authoritarian version of the real-name policy model, i.e., one that does not harshly affect anonymity. As a result, this paper has arrived at a here-called ‘dual-class’ solution, which proposes that the most prudent way for a real-name policy to avoid an authoritarian path is to create an environment of incentives for voluntary identity data disclosure on the internet.