Not all Bots are Bad Bots

When you think of the word “bots” you are probably imagining some kind of malicious code created solely to send you annoying spam messages or to create fake engagement on social media. While this is true some of the time, it is not always the case. Bots can actually be extremely helpful and even serve a good purpose.

What is an Internet Bot? 

An online bot is simply a software that is coded to run tasks online. They are not physical robots sitting behind computers (maybe in the future though). Even though little internet software robots seem like no big deal, they can be quite powerful depending on how they are programmed and what their purpose is.

Bots: the Good, the Bad, and the Cool

What makes a bot bad? 

Let’s start with the bad bots. Have you ever received a random message, email, or even phone call that tries to get some information out of you? Or sometimes just says “Hello” and then follows up with a completely out of context message? Those are likely bots. But the bots themselves are not the bad guys, it is their creator and their poor intent that is malicious. Some bots are designed to create fake social media accounts to endorse certain pages or even make negative comments. Bots can even be programmed to go as far as share fake news or have fake conversations with real people, hoping to get personal information from them. Depending on the capabilities of the programmer, believe it or not, it can even go much further than this.

Are all suspicious profiles bots? 

Don’t worry, not every profile you interact with online is run by a bot and not every post with a few thousand engagements is fake either – especially on Yubo. In fact, on Yubo, you have an added layer of protection against bots, fake profiles and people with bad intentions thanks to the latest Age Verification System put in place making Yubo a 100% user verified platform. A general rule of thumb to stay safe online is to NEVER, ever share your personal information with strangers. If a company or website requires personal information, it will always be done through their secure servers, but you cannot trust another person you don’t know very well with the same information. Another quick tip to avoid interacting with bots is: If it’s too good to be true, it probably is. The lottery won’t send you a direct message asking for your routing number to send the money, and… you probably didn’t win the lottery (yet).

Are all the bots bad?

Not every bot is evil. In fact, bots can be extremely helpful as they are excellent at collecting and compiling public data. Data scientists use bots all the time to collect important insights on our world. You can even easily access bot data with Google Trends, a free database of the most searched terms on Google. That’s pretty cool.

Now for the good bots. Bots are commonly used by tech companies to help with or carry out moderation to make the internet a better place. Yubo uses bots in combination with advanced AI algorithms and a team of around the clock real-time moderators to create as safe and positive a virtual environment as possible. By teaming up with bots, Yubo’s moderation team can ensure timely, effective and fair moderation is done. 

You might be wondering how Yubo’s real-time moderation works?

We can’t give away all of our secrets, but we can share some insight on how Yubo utilizes its bots for moderation purposes. Yubo created a system of bots that process Livestreams, content users share, and chats. 

For Livestreams, our bots analyze the Livestream video frame by frame to search for content that violates Yubo’s community guidelines. If the bots pick up on an inappropriate image, they will send that instance to one of Yubo’s real-time moderators, who are real people (not robots). Those moderators then go through each incident and take appropriate action.

Does Yubo use bots to moderate other content than livestreams? 

When it comes to the content users share, the bots are a bit more proactive. They will automatically scan the photo or video for content that breaches the community guidelines before the user is able to send it.

Yubo understands that messaging is a large part of socializing online, but believes that hate has no place on the app. This is why it also scans for harmful and inappropriate text. Separately, you can use Yubo’s Muted Words feature to hide certain words or phrases from your screen that you find personally triggering. Bot power feels good doesn’t it?

Bot moderation goes a bit further here as well. The bots also process text for personal information before the user is able to send it. If they find any, the use will receive a pop-up alert letting them know that they are about to share personal information with another person. If the user wishes to proceed, they can click through the pop up. It never hurts to think twice about sharing private information.

Again, safety is at the core of everything we do at Yubo. That is why we use the amazing power of bots, don’t worry only the good kind, with the best intentions in mind.