This is Part 7 of a 12-part series based on the research paper “Human-Machine Social Systems.” Use the table of links below to navigate to the next part. Table of Links Abstract and Introduction Human-machine interactions Collective outcomes Box 1: Competition in high-frequency trading markets Box 2: Contagion on Twitter Box 3: Cooperation and coordination on Wikipedia Box 4: Cooperation and contagion on Reddit Discussion Implications for research Implications for design Implications for policy Conclusion, Acknowledgments, References, and Competing interests Box 4: Cooperation and Contagion on Reddit Reddit is a popular news aggregation, content rating, and discussion website founded in 2005. Bots on Reddit provide internal moderation and communication, augment functionality (e.g., for mobile users), or post content, ranging from comic and playful posts by evident automated accounts such as haiku robot and ObamaRobot, to trolling and provocative comments by undercover social bots[214]. Similarly to Wikipedia, Reddit has developed norms and protocols for deploying bots [215], but similarly to Twitter, it has no effective service limitations to prevent covert and malicious automated accounts. Nevertheless, Reddit differs from Twitter in several crucial ways – content on the site is posted within communities, heavily moderated, up-/downvoted, and extensively discussed. Due to these structural differences, political misinformation, polarization, and conflict are less pronounced on the platform. Reddit offers evidence for collaboration and contagion between humans and bots. Content moderators have widely adopted Automod – a bot that is flexible to updates, adaptable to community rules, and interpretable. The bot aids with menial tasks but does not necessarily decrease workloads as it requires continuous updates in response to changes in user behavior and language and involves high volumes of correspondence with incorrectly banned users [216]. On the other side, regular users engage with evident entertainment bots, and their direct replies imitate the sentiment and the words of the bot posts [217]. Thus, emotional contagion and lexical entrainment can occur between humans and bots, even when humans are aware of the simple automated script behind the bot. Authors:
(1) Milena Tsvetkova, Department of Methodology, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, United Kingdom;
(2) Taha Yasseri, School of Sociology, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland and Geary Institute for Public Policy, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland;
(3) Niccolo Pescetelli, Collective Intelligence Lab, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, New Jersey, USA;
(4) Tobias Werner, Center for Humans and Machines, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany. This paper is available on arxiv under CC BY 4.0 DEED license. This is Part 7 of a 12-part series based on the research paper “Human-Machine Social Systems.” Use the table of links below to navigate to the next part. This is Part 7 of a 12-part series based on the research paper “Human-Machine Social Systems.” Use the table of links below to navigate to the next part. “ Human-Machine Social Systems .” Human-Machine Social Systems Table of Links Abstract and Introduction Abstract and Introduction Human-machine interactions Human-machine interactions Collective outcomes Collective outcomes Box 1: Competition in high-frequency trading markets Box 1: Competition in high-frequency trading markets Box 2: Contagion on Twitter Box 2: Contagion on Twitter Box 3: Cooperation and coordination on Wikipedia Box 3: Cooperation and coordination on Wikipedia Box 4: Cooperation and contagion on Reddit Box 4: Cooperation and contagion on Reddit Discussion Discussion Implications for research Implications for research Implications for design Implications for design Implications for policy Implications for policy Conclusion, Acknowledgments, References, and Competing interests Conclusion, Acknowledgments, References, and Competing interests Box 4: Cooperation and Contagion on Reddit Reddit is a popular news aggregation, content rating, and discussion website founded in 2005. Bots on Reddit provide internal moderation and communication, augment functionality (e.g., for mobile users), or post content, ranging from comic and playful posts by evident automated accounts such as haiku robot and ObamaRobot, to trolling and provocative comments by undercover social bots[214]. Similarly to Wikipedia, Reddit has developed norms and protocols for deploying bots [215], but similarly to Twitter, it has no effective service limitations to prevent covert and malicious automated accounts. Nevertheless, Reddit differs from Twitter in several crucial ways – content on the site is posted within communities, heavily moderated, up-/downvoted, and extensively discussed. Due to these structural differences, political misinformation, polarization, and conflict are less pronounced on the platform. Reddit offers evidence for collaboration and contagion between humans and bots. Content moderators have widely adopted Automod – a bot that is flexible to updates, adaptable to community rules, and interpretable. The bot aids with menial tasks but does not necessarily decrease workloads as it requires continuous updates in response to changes in user behavior and language and involves high volumes of correspondence with incorrectly banned users [216]. On the other side, regular users engage with evident entertainment bots, and their direct replies imitate the sentiment and the words of the bot posts [217]. Thus, emotional contagion and lexical entrainment can occur between humans and bots, even when humans are aware of the simple automated script behind the bot. Authors: (1) Milena Tsvetkova, Department of Methodology, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, United Kingdom; (2) Taha Yasseri, School of Sociology, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland and Geary Institute for Public Policy, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland; (3) Niccolo Pescetelli, Collective Intelligence Lab, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, New Jersey, USA; (4) Tobias Werner, Center for Humans and Machines, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany. Authors: Authors: (1) Milena Tsvetkova, Department of Methodology, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, United Kingdom; (2) Taha Yasseri, School of Sociology, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland and Geary Institute for Public Policy, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland; (3) Niccolo Pescetelli, Collective Intelligence Lab, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, New Jersey, USA; (4) Tobias Werner, Center for Humans and Machines, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany. This paper is available on arxiv under CC BY 4.0 DEED license. This paper is available on arxiv under CC BY 4.0 DEED license. available on arxiv

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Reddit Bots Improve Moderation, Encourage Cooperation, and Spread Emotions

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