Bots are destroying social media, but Decentralization may be the path to redemption.

Source: Cointelegraph Original: "Robots are Destroying Social Media, but Decentralization May Be the Path to Redemption"

The opinion comes from: Leroy Hofer, co-founder and CEO of Teneo Protocol

As the ancient wisdom says, no one knows you are a dog on the internet. Often, no one knows whether you are a robot, which makes the "death of the internet" theory sometimes feel unsettlingly real.

According to the 2024 Imperva Bad Bot Report, the share of traffic from bots reached an all-time high in 2024, growing by 2% compared to last year. The bot epidemic is wreaking havoc on the internet. People are starting to take notice—like Chanpeng Zhao, who recently urged Elon Musk to ban bots on the X platform. He is not the only one in the Web3 community raising this call, and it is entirely justified.

From artificially boosting interaction metrics to orchestrating scams, bots are rapidly drowning out genuine human interactions – all of this is happening as our lives increasingly shift to the online world.

Although platform owners continue to introduce AI-driven moderation and paywalls to curb bot activity, these solutions fail to address the underlying issues. Moderation tools often operate with very low transparency—wrongly flagging legitimate content without users knowing the reason.

Users often have to provide personal data to prove they are not robots, which raises privacy issues and creates barriers to participation. More problems are being created, and a decentralized approach is the only viable way forward.

If left unchecked, the rise of robots will bring consequences far beyond social media. Companies that invest heavily in digital marketing will see their budgets wasted on fake interactions. One can even imagine a dirty tactic where competitors use robots to waste each other's money by providing them with false impressions—this has already happened in the digital advertising space.

People - and will increasingly become - more skeptical of online interactions, making it harder for genuine creators and businesses to earn trust. User experience will also be impacted. As the noise of automation drowns out meaningful discussions, users may ultimately abandon social media forever. We need to address the bot issue, for all these reasons and more - once and for all.

Limitations of centralized solutions

Social media giants have been using centralized censorship strategies to tackle the bot problem for some time now. AI-driven detection systems are the first line of defense. They are far from perfect. Bots are becoming increasingly intelligent, often sneaking through by mimicking human behavior and bypassing protective measures. Additionally, false "positive tags" can lead to unfair restrictions on real users. Oh, that powerful ban hammer is a weapon from a more civilized era.

Another common strategy is to implement paywalls, such as the verification fees of X, requiring users to pay for authentication. This approach raises the financial barrier for bot operators but also creates a secondary system that disadvantages users who cannot or are unwilling to pay. Paywalls do not significantly affect well-funded bot farms, which can easily ignore these costs. Although these measures are well-intentioned, they often miss the mark in balancing security and user accessibility.

Decentralized solutions

The decentralized model hands control back to users and provides an alternative solution to avoid centralized entities deciding what is real and what is not. By using blockchain-based Decentralized Identity (DID) and reputation systems, the platform can verify real users without infringing on their privacy. Decentralized solutions reduce the need for vague censorship policies and empower individuals to control their digital reputation across different platforms.

DID solutions allow users to verify their authenticity through cryptographic proofs, thereby avoiding the cumbersome "Know Your Customer" process. Reputation-based systems can enhance resistance to bots by rewarding verified users with more social credibility, while also reducing the impact of suspicious accounts. The true advantage lies in the fact that these systems operate transparently, preventing centralized authorities from imposing rules that may prioritize corporate interests over user rights.

Solve the problem of robots without destroying social media.

The bot problem is not just a nuisance—it is a fundamental threat to the integrity of social media. The challenge lies in finding a solution that can eliminate bots without infringing on free speech and user control. Centralized solutions have failed. Worse still, centralized systems introduce new problems under the guise of security. A decentralized, data-driven approach enables people to authenticate on their own terms, making bot-driven manipulation more difficult.

We urgently need to move beyond existing systems and promote decentralized solutions that protect users and bring authenticity back to social media. If social media is to become a true space for human interaction, it must achieve decentralization before bots render it useless.

The viewpoint comes from: Leroy Hofer, co-founder and CEO of Teneo Protocol

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