Israeli internet activity driven by bots, fake users, and automation tools increased by 328% during the country's March 2021 elections, a study released last week by global cybersecurity company CHEQ revealed.
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A "bot" – short for "internet robots" – is a computer program that simulates human activity. Bots are most commonly used to automate certain services, such as customer service on websites, but since the 2016 US elections, they have become an integral part of political campaigning – and not necessarily in a good way.
As social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter play a bigger role in political communications in general and especially during election campaigns, bots and other automated tools have become major agents in the process of disseminating both valid information and "fake news" – a phenomenon that social media giants are actively trying to curb.
Bots potentially impacting major elections have been an issue globally for several years now. Reports in 2016 raised concerns over bots interfering with the US presidential elections, while other major democracies like France have reported similar issues. Even Twitter, which itself plays a significant role in public discourse around major elections, has been put into question over its bot activity, with Elon Musk claiming that over 20% of the platform's user base was made up of bots.
The CHEQ study took a pool of mobile and desktop traffic from the month leading up to the March 2021 elections and compared it with data from prior months. The analysis revealed nearly 2.6 million fake events during the month leading up to the elections – more than triple the amount of fake traffic found in non-elections months.
The data was taken from a broader global study conducted by CHEQ across a pool of over 50,000 websites worldwide. The study ran thousands of tests on on-site visitors to determine their validity and authenticity, revealing a wide range of bot and fake user activities, including scrapers, click farms, fake accounts, automation tools, and malicious botnets – often used to spread disinformation – and more.
"The Fake Web is a global phenomenon impacting all areas of online activity. Significant spikes in fake traffic and bot activity, like the one revealed in our study, are often related to specific regional events, like a major election, CEO and Founder of CHEQ Guy Tytunovich explained.
"Moving forward, it will be crucial to monitor the situation during the upcoming elections, to ensure bots and bad actors aren't manipulating our democratic process."
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