I took a look at d24, the article about bot activity on X during the Super Bowl, and it showed that around 75% of the traffic coming from the platform may have been fake. A detail from this source that stood out to me was how this was much higher compared to other platforms like Instagram or TikTok, which had very low percentages of fake traffic. This connects to what weve been learning about bots so far this course because it shows how they can significantly impact what we think is real engagement online.

This section made me think about how much information is actually contained and used in a single social media post, including both the content and the metadata like likes, time, and information about the user posting. This can be connected to my own experience using apps like Instagram and TikTok because I usually only pay attention to the post itself, not all the extra data behind it. I also didn’t realize how that hidden information could be used to understand or influence what people see what content.

I took a look at the “Programming paradigm” source from this bibliography section. This source helped me understand that programming isn’t just one way of writing code, but actually includes multiple “paradigms” that shape how problems are approached. What stood out to me is how coding languages like Python or Java can support more than one paradigm, which means there isn’t just one correct way to structure a program. This makes me think about how flexibility in programming reflects real world problem solving, where there is rarely just one way to solve an issue. The rest of the source basically explains different types of programming paradigms and how they classify and organize different programming languages.

This section helped me understand how bots are built using structured programming rules, similar to how language follows grammar rules to make sense. It made me realize that even something that seems simple or automatic online is actually the result of different, intentional design choices. This connects to the earlier parts of the reading about social media because it shows how much of what we see online is shaped by systems running in the background with these bots, not just human users.