Source: Cointelegraph
Original: “Bots Are Killing Social Media, But Decentralization May Be the Path to Redemption”
Views from: Leroy Hofer, Co-founder and CEO of Teneo Protocol
As the old saying goes, nobody knows you’re a dog on the internet. Often, nobody knows if you’re a bot either, leading to the “dead internet” theory sometimes feeling disturbingly real.
According to the 2024 Imperva Bad Bot Report, the share of bot traffic reached an all-time high in 2024, increasing by 2% from last year. The bot epidemic is ravaging the web. People are starting to take notice—like Chanpeng Zhao, who recently called for 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 inflating engagement metrics to orchestrating scams, bots are rapidly drowning out genuine human interaction—this is happening as our lives increasingly shift to the online world.
While platform owners continue to roll out AI-driven moderation and paywalls to curb bot activity, these solutions fail to address the root problem. Moderation tools often operate with very low transparency—wrongly flagging legitimate content, leaving users unaware of the reasons.
Users are also frequently required to provide personal data to prove they are not bots, raising privacy concerns and creating barriers to participation. More problems are being created, and a decentralized approach is the only viable way forward.
If left unchecked, the rise of bots will have 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 bots to waste each other's money by providing them with false impressions—this has already happened in the digital advertising space.
People—will become—more and more skeptical of online interactions, making it harder for genuine creators and businesses to earn trust. User experience will also suffer. As the noise of automation drowns out meaningful discussions, users may ultimately abandon social media for good. We need to address the bot problem, for all these reasons and more—once and for all.
Limitations of Centralized Solutions
Social media giants have been using centralized moderation strategies to tackle the bot problem for some time. AI-driven detection systems are the first line of defense. They are far from perfect. Bots are becoming increasingly sophisticated, often slipping through by mimicking human behavior and bypassing safeguards. Moreover, erroneous “positive flags” can lead to unfair restrictions on real users. Oh, that powerful ban hammer, a weapon from a more civilized age.
Another common strategy is to implement paywalls, such as X’s verification fees, 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 will not pay. Paywalls do little to deter well-funded bot farms, which can easily ignore these costs. Although these measures are well-intentioned, they often misfire in balancing safety with user accessibility.
Decentralized Solutions
Decentralized models return control to users and provide an alternative that avoids centralized entities deciding what is real and what is not. Through blockchain-based Decentralized Identity (DID) and reputation systems, platforms can verify real users without infringing on their privacy. Decentralized solutions reduce the need for opaque moderation policies and empower individuals to control their digital reputation across different platforms.
DID solutions allow users to verify their authenticity through cryptographic proofs, avoiding cumbersome “Know Your Customer” processes. Reputation-based systems can help enhance resistance to bots by rewarding verified users with more social credibility while reducing the impact of suspicious accounts. The real advantage is that these systems operate transparently, preventing centralized authorities from imposing rules that may prioritize corporate interests over user rights.
Addressing the Bot Problem Without Undermining 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 safety. A decentralized, data-driven approach enables individuals to authenticate on their own terms, making bot-driven manipulation more difficult.
We urgently need to move beyond existing systems and push for decentralized solutions that protect users and restore authenticity to social media. If social media is to become a true space for human interaction, it must achieve decentralization before bots render it useless.
Views from: Leroy Hofer, Co-founder and CEO of Teneo Protocol
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This article is for general informational purposes only and should not be considered legal or investment advice. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.
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