In 2025, we are no strangers to bots or artificial intelligence lurking in every corner of the internet. However, we did not expect technology to completely take it over so soon. It is now being reported that bots take up 51% of all internet traffic. And in some spaces, take up more room than real human users.
As we continue to debate or engage in online discourse, it is becoming increasingly more difficult to decipher whether it is real opinions on the other side of the screen or just bots pushing a certain narrative. This poses the question of whether we should continue having important conversations on social media, or instead migrate back to private conversations, whether in person or over text.
Pesky online bots have been around for years, but the real concern is over the scale in which they exist now and how that can affect the internet as we know it. Bots can now mock humans so well that they can influence trends, create more engagement for controversial events, lead narratives over online debates and overall effect the natural flow of online engagement.
This skews how something is actually being received by the public. This problem starts to warp the true meaning of online engagement and dissolve trust in online spaces, no one knows what is real or what is a bot.
A change in how we interact with online discourse might benefit us as more bots infiltrate our spaces. People might start to migrate to private, enclosed digital spaces like group chats or invite-only places like Discord, to discuss topics. Some people also might prefer talking to people face-to-face more regularly to avoid the problem altogether.
As we experience the evolution of technology and all the challenges it brings, it has been a recurring theme of people wanting to do things the original way. This could be someone’s fear of change or it just might be a sign that we do not need technology to be this advanced and should stick to listening to other human beings’ thoughts and ideas.
However, shifting the discourse to complete privacy would not solve everything, as the internet allows for people to connect and create community, and without that, a lot of people would go unheard. These public spaces open the floodgates of new perspectives, different experiences and nuanced conversations that you cannot always replicate with the people you know and are similar to. The goal should not be to abandon public spaces, because they do have these beneficial qualities, but there does need to be more precautions when it comes to bots infiltrating the internet space so heavily.
There needs to be a balance among the public spaces we occupy, instead of letting bots rule over humans in numbers online, there should be updated security measures advanced enough to catch the now, artificially intelligent bots.
This solution is obviously out of the control of the every-day user, so if you are looking for a more trustworthy way to have productive conversations or hear multi-faceted opinions, previously mentioned platforms like Discord, Quora or Reddit might be better options to ensure you are hearing conversation from real people.
As we explore farther into technology and bots skew the distinction between artificial and real conversations online, what lies ahead for meaningful and nuanced conversations may depend on ensuring that the spaces in which we talk are full of actual people.
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