{"id":105495,"date":"2020-04-16T08:28:36","date_gmt":"2020-04-16T15:28:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/04\/facebook-is-using-bots-to-simulate-what-its-users-might-do"},"modified":"2020-04-16T08:28:36","modified_gmt":"2020-04-16T15:28:36","slug":"facebook-is-using-bots-to-simulate-what-its-users-might-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/04\/facebook-is-using-bots-to-simulate-what-its-users-might-do","title":{"rendered":"Facebook is using bots to simulate what its users might do"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/facebook-is-using-bots-to-simulate-what-its-users-might-do.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Has developed a new method to play out the consequences of its code.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The context:<\/strong> Like any software company, the tech giant needs to test its product any time it pushes updates. But the sorts of debugging methods that normal-size companies use aren\u2019t really enough when you\u2019ve got 2.5 billion users. Such methods usually focus on checking how a single user might experience the platform and whether the software responds to those individual users\u2019 actions as expected. In contrast, as many as 25% of Facebook\u2019s major issues emerge only when users begin interacting with one another. It can be difficult to see how the introduction of a feature or updates to a privacy setting might play out across billions of user interactions.<\/p>\n<p><strong>SimCity:<\/strong> In response, Facebook <a href=\"https:\/\/research.fb.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/WES-Agent-based-User-Interaction-Simulation-on-Real-Infrastructure.pdf?\">built a scaled-down version of its platform<\/a> to simulate user behavior. Called WW, it helps engineers identify and fix the undesired consequences of new updates before they\u2019re deployed. It also automatically recommends changes that can be made to the platform to improve the community experience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Has developed a new method to play out the consequences of its code. The context: Like any software company, the tech giant needs to test its product any time it pushes updates. But the sorts of debugging methods that normal-size companies use aren\u2019t really enough when you\u2019ve got 2.5 billion users. Such methods usually focus [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-105495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105495\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}