Facebook is the largest social media platform in the world, and it has the power and resources to match. However, no matter how hard the company works to catch the bad actors on its platform, they always seem to stay a step ahead. However, the social media giant may have found an unorthodox solution to stop them. According to reports this week, Facebook is working on building a completely cloned version of its platform, then populating it with bots. These simulated users will be free to friend, connect and share content — as well as scam and abuse.

Facebook says that “scamming” bots in this environment will be trained to connect with “target” bots who are programmed to behave like real-life cybercrime victims. Other bots still will be programmed to invade users’ privacy or send harassing messages. In this environment, Facebook can test new features and tools, then model how users would react. Some of these bots could get read-only access to real Facebook data, but researchers warned that this access must be limited. They said that “bots must be suitably isolated from real users to ensure that the simulation, although executed on real platform code, does not lead to unexpected interactions between bots and real users.”

This is a unique solution to Facebook’s spam problem, and it’s appropriately cutting-edge for such a successful tech company. Now here’s hoping Facebook doesn’t feed too much of our data to this shadow platform.

Recommended Resources

The Choice of Tech Experts Worldwide. Try 90 days free of Bitdefender 2020 and experience the highest level of digital safety.

Private Internet Access is an award-winning, cost-effective VPN solution. The use of an anonymous and trusted VPN is essential to your online privacy, security and identity protection.

System Mechanic 14 – Make your computer run like new. Winner of 200+ Editor’s Choice awards!