Hello evince,
Well it only makes sense that Russian agents have the goal of causing Americans anger, infighting and hatred, (which is very much to their advantage - why attack America if you can get America to attack itself?) It is then logical that they would search for internet chat rooms in which to pose as posters and stir up hatred. It is totally logical that they found an American site named "Just Plain Politics" created fake accounts; and set up bots to antagonize the conversations.
Our goal in fighting back is to not fall for it.
It is also logical that on-edge emotional Americans would react to the prodding with vitriol of their own. Once that happens, the Russians have achieved their goal.
Bots can be difficult to spot. One possible method is humor. Bots have no sense of humor. If you try to joke around with another poster, and tell a commonly very funny joke just to test them, and get absolutely no acknowledgement of it, not even a simple lol, as if you never made a joke at all, you could be wasting your time talking to a bot.
Another method is by using phonetics to say something. Bots will absolutely not be able to recognize what you are saying. If you suspect you are talking to a bot, and you want to test them, simply tell them that you are not convinced you are even talking to a human and ask them to prove it by responding to some very simply question written in phonetic terms or badly misspelled terms that a human would recognize, but a bot would not be able to read. It appears to a machine to be gibberish.
For instance:
"I only wish to speak with real people. Can you please prove to me that you are actually a person by answering this question? Thanks. Just try to pronounce these words very slowly to reveal the question:
Wotttz duh kuulller ahhv da ssky?"
A bot cannot read that.
If the poster responds with anything but the word blue you could be talking to a machine. If the poster refuses to play along, you're either talking to a bot, or whomever you are talking to is simply not worth talking to.
But the ultimate test of whether you are trying to have a conversation with a bot is mutual respect. Bots do not have a character. They have no personality. There's no there, there, ya know?
Any real human shows emotion from time to time. Some more, some less, but a machine simply lacks any at all.
Once I began requiring that the people I talk to share simple respect, I noticed that everybody I talk to has a personality. If you're talking to a machine it will often simply ignore what you say and just say what it was programmed to say instead. If you're not getting the simple respect of having someone actually respond to what you say, you could be talking to a machine.
The easiest way to ensure that you are talking with humans is to require simple respect, and offer the same in return. That can be a real challenge if you have a habit of mouthing off at people, but habits can be changed if you force yourself to act differently for 2-3 weeks. After that you no longer have to because good manners will be your new habit.
It could change your life for the better.
If you don't want to do that, or think you just can't do it, you can always try one of the other methods above.
(government issue black socks & haircuts???
)
