Trolls and bots - A social virus

Instagram post of your favourite sports personalities or celebrities in recent times are plagued with certain "bot" posts like, "We gonna ignore the fact that I've GOT A HUGE BOOTY", or abusive trolls commenting obscenities without fear of karma.

Maybe you were recently made aware of how Manchester Utd are meeting with Twitter regarding the racist comments which Paul Pogba received after missing a penalty in the EPL.

Team mate Harry McGuire has called for a change "Disgusting. Social media need to do something about it... Every account that is opened should be verified by a passport/driving licence. Stop these pathetic trolls making numerous accounts to abuse people."

The "non digital world" has safeguards to prevent these kinds of anti social acts. However in the digital world people are able to hide behind their screens and be unaccountable for their actions. Sadly for good people, the digital world has become a lawless reflection on today's society, which now needs to be addressed.

The two major intruders of antisocial behaviour are "Bots" and "Trolls": Instagram Bots, allow you to automate posts and comment; the purpose being that you can plan ahead when managing your Instagram tasks. Some users have taken advantage of this mechanism for antisocial behaviour creating posts, follows and comments which are unacceptable.

A troll is a person who initiates conflict and abuse of others online, with the sole intention to upset and create self relevance.

Revisiting Harry McGuire’s tweet, calling for identity verifcation to be associated to all account openings; this would create accountability for comments and posts by both trolls and bot creators.

It would certainly deter many of these types of anti social behaviours and the ones that continue, our police services could easily track down and confront in a traditional manner. Like George W Bush famously said,”We’re gonna smoke them out

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