Facebook has a parallel social network for bots to test safeguards

Facebook has built a parallel social network where millions of bots can be let loose. These bots will be trained to realistically simulate behaviours of real people and interact with each other.

In this parallel Facebook these bots can message each other, comment on posts, send friend requests, visit pages etc.

Also, they can stimulate extreme scenarios such as trying to sell drugs, guns etc to see how Facebook’s algorithms are trying to prevent them

When the system simulates a scam, one bot plays the scammer, and another their victim. Other bots try to post illicit content on the shadow Facebook, break privacy rules such as accessing messages, or gather as much data from other fake users.

However,  researchers claim that the system is not infallible and that there is a risk of collision of  virtual and real worlds