What could possibly go wrong with your Telegram bot and why the number of channel subscribers does not matter?
How a schoolkid can take bot down and how to increase the number of channel subscribers without any investments? Protect your bot and do not let «populated channels» fool you.
Hi everyone! We, team WMB, develop chatbots for business. We’ve created a platform which provides us with a possibility to develop cross platform bots for Facebook, Vkontakte, Telegram and Skype. We’ve recently encountered an unexpected problem, which has simple solution but, nevertheless, could cause huge negative consequences. A 13-years old girl, who is eager to tell the World her stories, took our chat bot down.
But first things first. On Tuesday, July 25th, one of our chatbots in Telegram stopped responding, however, the same bot in other messengers was functioning well.
Quick log review has revealed something we were not prepared for. Our chatbot decided to socialize and started reading several channels.
Let’s neglect the content of girl’s posts and concentrate on the main consequences:
Channels are able to bring chatbots down if the processing and moderation of the messages from channels are not set. This could happen due to several reasons — bot could be puzzled by the parameters of the incoming message or it could try to respond according using its logic. Failing to answer chatbot is losing its sense of existence and, certainly, will face existence crisis.
The most interesting part of this story is how chatbot becomes a channel subscriber. Channel administrator decide whether bot should receive info and which info would be useful for chat bots. The opinion of bot itself is neglected in this case. Truly, we are very far from tolerant society! Another case of intolerance from protein-based lifeform.
In order to get a new subscriber channel starter just need to add any user into the list of channel administrators. Chatbot cannot decline such invitation. Channel administrators are those subscribers who have one or more admin functions and adding new user is the most harmless of them. Giving right to add new users to bot automatically makes it a channel admin, moreover, bot will be able to attract new subscriber and will not harm the channel.
The problem could not be solved simply by forbidding bot to join other groups. In this case bot will not be able to join the chat, but still will be able to administer the channel.
There is another danger apart from the breakdown of the bot itself — such case could be a real pain in the neck for marketing specialists. I’ve conducted a small test before writing the article. I opened a list of bots in the channel named Bot Collection and started to add bots as administrators to my channel, then I allowed them just the «Add users» function. As a result, just in 1 minute I’ve received 5 more subscribers to my channel, which means that one could increase number of subscribers by 300 in one hour. It could be a substantial number for niche channels. Therefore, it is vital to evaluate a channel not just by the number of its subscribers but also by the number of post views. However, be careful as one subscriber might generate more than one views.
Dear colleagues, we will be happy to discuss if somebody faced similar or other interesting problems with chatbot activities.
