Facebook bots to create a friendlier universe
Apr 2020, phys.org
"Facebook has created a parallel universe called the Web Enabled Simulation that will mimic the actions and behaviors of its users in an effort to detect how to best achieve a more harmonic community."
This sounds absolutely crazy: a virtual neighborhood filled with thousands of interacting socialbots, programmed to engage in good, as well as bad behavior, such as exploiting vulnerabilities of users or hacking personal information.
But this was the part that got me; it's not the content, but the way we're talking about simulated worlds "accidentally" interacting (infecting?) real people:
"Bots must be suitably isolated from real users to ensure that the simulation, although executed on real platform code, does not lead to unexpected interactions between bots and real users," the WES report states.
And to metalevel that shit, we're already enduring that threat, in the form of mis- and dis-information campaigns propagating on these same networks, and where there is NO purposeful separation (quarantine?) between bots and real users.
Metabolism of the Anthroposphere.
Post Script:
WW follows an earlier simulation by Facebook called Sapienz, which studied behavioral trends. But the older program ran on an isolated Facebook platform. WW will operate invisibly in real time on an actual Facebook platform.
Also:
Amid in-game Hong Kong protests, Chinese retailers drop Animal Crossing sales
Apr 2020, Ars Technica
AKA:
Notes:
WES: Agent-based User Interaction Simulation on Real Infrastructure, arXiv:2004.05363 [cs.SE] arxiv.org/abs/2004.05363
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