The Munich startup BotStop wants a human internet. The three founders were annoyed by social media, where it's no longer clear whether the person you're talking to is actually human or a bot. Andreas Volz, Jörg Strebel, and Michael Fries answered seven questions for Munich Startup. They are convinced that they're hitting the nail on the head.
Update from February 1, 2018: The founders of BotStop have decided to discontinue the startup. If you want to know why, you'll find the explanation below.
1. Who are you and what do you do? Please introduce yourselves briefly!
We are Andi, Micha, and Jörg, the thinkers and developers behind the BotStop initiative. We met eight years ago while working together in the IT department of a major Munich-based car manufacturer. Jörg (39) holds a doctorate in computer science, Andi (37) also holds a degree in computer science, and Michael (47) is an IT management assistant.
We are a well-coordinated and experienced team with all the essential skills. Through many years of working in the IT sector, we all have a wealth of project experience. We specialize in detecting and identifying bots on social networks.
Is this still a human or already a machine?
2. But that's been around for a long time!
Social bot detection is a very new field, as software robots have traditionally been used against internet services or servers. The topic is still heavily researched. However, we don't want to wait for universities to deliver results; we want to get started right away. We expect the increasing social importance of social media and the accelerating development of artificial intelligence to continue driving this field in the future.
Flexible algorithms against opinion manipulation
What sets us apart is that we have developed many indicators ourselves and 
We offer a product that combines machine-based bot detection, human review, consulting, and combat. Our customers aren't just media outlets; we have an open offering aimed at those who process data from social media platforms, but also at web forum operators, major brands with their own presence, financial service providers, and many more.
“We hit the nerve of the times”
3. What are the three main ingredients for your recipe for success?
- First ingredient: Our topic is relevant and hits the nerve of the times.
- Second ingredient: We're an experienced team, and we're all passionate about this topic. We want to put people back at the center of interaction on social networks and prevent opinion manipulation via social bots.
- Third ingredient: We've built efficient and flexible algorithms that allow us to conduct evaluations and advise clients in a very short time. The algorithms are language-independent and can therefore be deployed internationally quite quickly.
Feedback needed for more accurate forecasts for the federal election
4. Let’s get down to business: How is business going?
We just went live! We now need feedback to better understand the market, identify use cases, and refine the product. By launching now, we want to be able to provide media and opinion research institutes with more accurate forecasts for the German federal election than we did recently for Brexit or the US election. We're currently only scaling to a limited extent with our manpower, but we'll change that.
5. What does Munich mean to you?
For us, Munich is the ideal location to launch an IT-related company. The ecosystem of universities, incubators, startups, and numerous IT and media companies is perfect for quickly gaining momentum with our idea, gathering feedback, and finding backers.
Automated bot cleaning on the horizon?
6. How will your startup become the next unicorn? Or will we see you soon at Epic Fail Night?
The primary goal now is to harden the product through customer feedback. There's a huge need for statistics that are clean of bots. However, the market is still in its infancy, and the pendulum could easily swing in the other direction.
Once the product has been sufficiently hardened, it's a matter of connecting additional social networks, providing an API, enabling automated bot cleaning, or providing a browser extension that interactively warns about social bots. We have plenty of ideas.
7. Isar or English Garden?
No matter, the main thing is that there are no bots!
Here is the explanation for the update from February 1, 2018: The founders of BotStop have decided to discontinue the startup due to professional and personal changes. During product development, they also realized that social bots and fake profiles are being actively used on Twitter and Instagram, primarily for commercial reasons, to push advertising. Neither the social media channels themselves nor social media marketers are currently interested in taking action against bots or fake profiles.
