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Introduction

A bot is a term that we can boldly say is one of the most used terms on the internet and one factor that we all must encounter to complete certain tasks they can run freely without any human intervention and in most cases, they are used to perform tasks that humans can't because it’s believed that they can do it better than humans. A bot is a short term of the word robot but since we are talking about the internet we can say internet robot.

Bots are supposed to complete or take on tasks that the human can’t perform while making it look like the task are being performed by humans, that is to mimic human behaviour when completing or performing the task but over the years it seems bots have been evolving and now taking actions on their own more often than before. They are usually designed from an algorithm to perform certain tasks but it seems they are taking actions more than the actual task designed for.

Will they take over the internet?

Like I said earlier bots are one of the most used terms on the internet and one of the most worrisome factors too. Let’s take an example, look at the case between Elon Musk and Twitter, when Elon Musk wanted to buy Twitter his mission was to get rid of bots because he believes they are too many and more than a certain percentage claimed they were but Twitter were reluctant to release documents and data to prove him wrong.

But today we see bots everywhere on Twitter, they flood timelines, and comment sections distributing links, auto liking tweets and even quoting tweets and if one is not careful and clicked those links it might lead to something bad. So is it safe to say that Elon Musk was right about his point? Because bots are everywhere now on Twitter taking control of the feeds some will even send DMs requesting to perform tasks and gain rewards.

What about web3 platforms, are bots going to take over too? In an article, I saw that a variety of web3 games have been known to accumulate more than 100,000 bots which means more than 50% of the games are made up of bots. This means they are everywhere and nowhere is safe from them. However, web3 is known for its decentralization, that is, censorship resistance and all, so what will become of it when bots start taking over? How can we solve it?

Types of Bots

Bots come in two forms and that is, the bad bots and the good bots, the good bots are the ones that support/stimulate conversation with humans e.g. Google Assistant, Siri, Alexa etc. These are known as chatbots and they are also some that assist on social media platforms they are known as social bots.

The bad bots are those ones that are designed or programmed for malicious activities like distributing malware, phishing and spamming etc. They are usually created by hackers for their activities.

Facts

• More than 50% of internet traffic is made of bots currently

• Botnets are capable of taking over millions of devices at once (botnets are used to carry out cyber-attacks, spam, phishing and malware etc.)

• Verified bots are allowed around the internet because of the services they help render

• More than 50% of cyber-attacks are usually small businesses

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