Digital media

"I cheated YouTube for five months and got caught."

The article discusses a YouTuber that eluded YouTube for months as he purchased artificial clicks and views from a black market site. The user, an employee of the website The Daily Dot, even went as far as contacting site administrators in a vain attempt to "turn himself in." Eventually the video got taken down once he monetized his earnings. This reminded me of all the bots that plague the digital world and how they get worse with time. I have only been using Instagram for less than a year, yet everyday I receive new "likes" and "follows" from obscenely gorgeous models that wouldn't touch me with a ten-foot pole. So a new problem arises. It's no longer a matter of what's real or what's fake; but rather who's real and who's fake. The dangers of fake information snaking through the internet have plagued our digital playground and thought bots have been around for quite some time (my earliest recollection was during the days of AOL Instant Messenger and Yahoo Messenger), bot presence has grown exponentially in social media. With Artificial Intelligence making daily strides in advancement how long will it be until bots can publish fake articles of their own? Or make fake YouTube videos of their own? Big corporations will hire top notch programmers and engineers to create new bots working around the clock to pump out new material, effectively killing the "little guy" and the true source of innovation! Is it only a matter of time before Professor Snelson is replaced by a bot to teach e-lit? Only time will tell.

"Then, in September of 2014, Ulman revealed that, for the last five months, her social media accounts had been an extended performance project, which she named “Excellences & Perfections.” - Instagram Hoax That Became an Art World Sensation"