BOWKY = Bot Who Knows You

A BOWKY is a Bot Who Knows You.

That is, a BOWKY is a bot that has access to the big database of information about you that's been collected over the years from all of your online interactions: your liking and friending and following and shopping and buying and commenting and communicating and opining. It's all there, and it's sold to "advertisers."

Your information is sold to... who now?

Now, let's be clear about that term "advertiser." Yes, it refers to companies that want to sell you slacks or soap; but it also refers to organizations that want to tap into your political stance on something, rub a pain point, and get you to join their true believers echo chamber. "Left" or"right," whatever those terms mean, the important thing is that they touch a pain point and arouse an emotion, a passion that can be exploited to get you to believe something or do something.

The bot herding business has been labor intensive - until now.

Sutton Smith does a spectacular job of explaining how bot herding works in less than two minutes, so we hope you'll watch her video. But she moved on from that job seven years ago. Now, bot herding, like all industries, is discovering the amazing efficiencies introduced by artificial intelligence. And so if you think that social media has unduly influenced people and inflamed social and political passions, well, BOWKYs are going to accelerate that process and make it more extreme.

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