24/09/2016 Click - Short Edition

Donald Trump's ideas aren't just different, they are a series

She's been taking plenty of money out for herself.

It's the most expensive playground fight in history.

In Donald Trump's America, people are put back to work.

Let's remember what happened on 9/11, these were not refugees.

This Monday sees the first US presidential debates,

and, although voters will probably be reminded of what the nominees

I can't help thinking there'll be at least a little bit

The last big presidential battle was all about YouTubeing

the candidates into people's homes, but now Facebook and Twitter

are the main online battlegrounds, and that's not just in the US.

There's no doubt about it, some of the big platforms

You've got national parties who want to get their

political messages out, and they have to pay for that -

that's bought advertising, in the old sense.

And if they don't do that, they don't get their message

to voters, and that's where Facebook have got us all on lockdown.

The Tories were ahead of the game at the last general election,

the other parties are going to catch up by the next general

But social media is about more than paid for advertising.

Politicians can engage with voters, their messages can go viral.

Supporter groups can rally and massively big up

We even judge how important that message is based on the number

So it's probably quite important to know that not all of these

They are fake followers, run by political campaigns

to amplify certain topics, follow certain people

These are the political Twitter bots.

The bots will take the message and repeat it an hour

later, or maybe two hours and three hours later.

They'll send it off to their own networks of followers, tens, 20,000

times beyond what the politician can initially reach with

Phil Howard is a professor of political science

at the Oxford Internet Institute, whose research has revealed that

political campaigns are now routinely using bots

Including deflecting Donald Trump's comments about Mexican-Americans.

They're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime,

He made a claim that Mexican-American voters

would support him, would be voting for him in a big way.

And shortly after making this big claim, there was a community

of Latino Twitter bots, so folks with Mexican sounding names,

who were US citizens and using Twitter to voice

A little bit of research showed that these were all new users,

they weren't actually users, they were bots, tweeting the same

message, sometimes exactly the same message,

And so he was able to say "Mexican-Americans will vote for me"

and point to a community that was actually just

There are very strict rules governing what the media can report

To your knowledge, are there rules that cover social

I think there should be more public policy oversight,

over social networks, social media networks during elections.

In the US context, the elections, the Federal Elections Commission

there, has decided that electronic communications are not part

For example, they'll be following many more accounts

They might have blank or irrelevant profile pictures and names,

and they may be tweeting at an inhumanly fast rate.

High-quality bots, however, will look a lot more human.

In fact, they may even be connected to a real human,

who can give occasional real responses.

There's actually a market in these false accounts.

So you buy 1,000 users who look good, they'll join five

or ten at a time, over the course of a month or two.

By the time you're into the campaign season, three weeks before,

This is a great question, and it's part of the research

The people designing political bots often work for the political

campaign teams that a candidate will hire when they want Office.

Hiring somebody to write bots, to amplify your message,

is now a normal part of political campaigning in advanced democracies.

But then there are the bots that, so far, haven't done anything...

This bot is an example of a bot that has joined relatively recently.

It's following 108 people, but nobody is following it.

We think of this as a sleeper, a sleeper bot, it's

My great fear is that large networks of these bots may be activated

Someone will activate bot networks to either bring up the vote,

There's enough bot networks out there, and we've seen them used

in sensitive political moments, that I'm pretty sure they'll play

an active part of political communication in the US election.

Next up, we're going to take a look at some new tricks you can do

Burner numbers for Tinder, no roaming charges, a stealth mode

Dan Simmons looks at the revolution happening in mobile,

and he's met one company boss who's taking no prisoners.

I've only rang you like a hundred times today.

Just stop calling me, erase my contact.

This is the Vodafone voicemail service for...

According to this man there is an easy and hard way

to control who has your digits, and that was the hard way.

Our phone numbers, our mobile numbers, is the things that's

When someone doesn't want to give his phone

number, he's telling you, I give you my e-mail,

add me on Facebook, etc, etc, but the phone number

Taig used to be a stuntman, oh, and he's also a double

But now he's reinventing himself as the boss of one of several

new phone companies that is starting to shake

His onoff service is changing the rules in France, and now the UK,

We are bringing like a virtual operating system that provides

multiple phone numbers, but not only that.

For example, you can send SMS at a delayed time.

You can put the call on voicemail, but leave the SMS on.

You cannot do that with any phone in the world.

It gives you so much flexibility in your hands,

to give maybe a different phone number for your business,

for your friends, for one night, or whatever.

Users can go into stealth mode, to hide the numbers they're

using for certain things from prying eyes, or adopt a number that's local

Using apps to make internet calls isn't new, but both caller

and receiver often have to have the app installed,

As well as data, it uses the GSM network to connect to the handset,

so you can do SMS messages, get wider coverage,

and just one person, even if that's the receiver,

There's another benefit that we've all been seeing with these

new messengers and that's cheap, or apparently free, calls.

You may say, well that's all very well, but I still need to pay

for a mobile contract to get a connection to use

FreedomPop, for example, wants to give you a free SIM

with free calls and free data and this month,

for the first time, unlimited use of the Whatsapp messenger.

FreedomPop right now provides a basic free service.

We're trying to get to a point where we can

take that free service, double it up and double it up again.

And ultimately we'd like to get to a point where your voice,

The old telecoms networks are starting to respond to these

Next month, Deutsche Telekom launches its new Immmr

app that merges SMS, calls and offers multiple numbers.

While others can't wait to create their own,

and will partner with onoff in around 40 countries

In the race for cheap thrills, it seems nobody wants to be

That's it for the short version of Click this week. The long version is

on iPlayer and we are online if you want to play behind the scenes.

Banks for watching and see you soon.