While Twitter, Facebook and YouTube have started to identity and deactivate false accounts and fake bot postings, bad bots still have a tremendous influence on public opinion.
presidential election campaigns were heating up, the mainstream social media channels were barraged with Russian-operated bot-generated posts in favor of Donald Trump. The trend became especially apparent during the June 2016 Brexit vote when, as reported by TechCrunch, “Russian accounts posted almost 45,000 messages pertaining to the EU referendum in the 48 hours around the vote.” Of these reported posts, most were bot-driven, and of those, most were in favor of 'leave' rather than 'remain,' the impact of which was further magnified when bot-generated posts were liked and shared by other bots and by human users.Īround the same time, as the 2016 U.S.
