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How bots are buying PS5s and inflating prices

washingtonpost.com

12 points by afterwalk 5 years ago · 2 comments

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NoOneNew 5 years ago

Actually, it just dawned on me. What if our issues with social media, the stock market, etc are not due to the underlying system but due to bot exploitation. Bots allow a very, very small demographic to have a very, very large influence and impact. Especially in systems where the wisdom of the crowd is technically the driving factor of popularity and reward...

I mean, if in theory, you could make sure one person can only have one account and zero automation, would we see a benefit?

Yes, I know difficult to achieve as I've written scrappers and bots, albeit for nothing nefarious. I know there are hurdles, but as a thought experiment, would we actually see any benefit? Same like, you would never talk to someone in real life as you would online. Is there that kind of effect if bots disappear?

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