Propaganda Bots
Bot activity is not unique to the United States; similar activity-disrupting activities, like launching attacks and disseminating propaganda, have been studied empirically in Mexico, Honduras, Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Argentina, Peru, Spain, Turkey, Egypt, Syria, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Azerbaijan, Russia, Tibet, China, UK, Australia, and South Korea. Spambot technology infused with machine learning and artificial intelligence is compounded by the weaponization of every conceivable digital vector, all made more potent by the use of memetics, psychographic targeting, cognitive biases, socionics, and spiral dynamics [26].For instance, social media bots are prolific on Mexican networks. Bots and trolls target activists, journalists, businesses, political targets, and social movements with disruptive attacks, personal degradation campaigns, distractions, targeted malware, and death threats. Since the publication of his research denouncing bot activity, Alberto Escorcia has received constant death threats to him and his family, he has suffered rumor campaigns that have impacted his business relationships, his systems have been hacked, his website has been taken offline, and someone has broken into his apartment and stolen computer equipment. Similarly, researcher and blogger Rossana Reguillo suffered a two-month campaign of phishing links and death threats containing misogynistic language, hate speech, and pictures of dismembered bodies and burned corpses. The purpose of the attacks was to dissuade her from communicating with journalists, academics, activists, and her audience. The goal appears to have been to disrupt her work, force her to delete her accounts, or intimidate her into leaving the internet[26].Digital propaganda botnets can be bought, sold, rented, and shared. They are not impeded by borders. For instance, the case study “Elecciones Mayo 2015. Quienes hacen trampa en Twitter” (Elections May 2015. Who is playing tricks on Twitter) discusses a network of bot accounts that were created in April 2014 to support Venezuelan anti-government protests La Salida, went silent for eight months, and then reemerged tweeting about Spanish politics, shortly after the creation of the MEVA (Movimiento Español Venezolano Antipodemos). This second period of activity focused on criticism of PODEMOS and promotion of Ciudadanos, while the possible account of the network’s administrator began to be followed by 18 official accounts of that party [26].Propaganda bots and botnets are used to disrupt networks, suppress and censor information, spread misinformation and smear campaigns, and overwhelm vital nodes to sever them from the network. In 2014, Alberto Escorcia from LoQueSigue in Mexico City used the open source program Gephi to map Tweets visually using the hashtag “#YaMeCansé,” and he found that armies of bots were attacking the hashtag repeatedly and attempting to appropriate it. Even after users mutated the hashtag into “#YaMeCansé2 ” and later “#YaMeCansé3,” the bots continued to spam the tags to make them useless. Over the course of a month, the hashtag morphed into 30 different iterations, with each overthrown by bots. Similarly, in January 2015, bots spammed “#EPNNotWelcome,” which was meant to protest Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto’s (EPN) visit to Washington, D.C.; however, the tweets of thousands of online protesters were drowned in the tenfold flood of bot tweets [26].According to Colombian hacker Andrés Sepúlveda, bots were extremely effective in influencing voters prior to an election, because the audience placed greater trust in the faux viral group-think implied by the bots than it did in the facts and opinions provided by television, newspapers, and online media outlets. People wanted to believe what they thought were spontaneous expressions of real people on social media more than the self-proclaimed experts in the media, because they had a desire to be part of the cultural zeitgeist. Sepúlveda discovered that he could manipulate the public debate easily by exploiting that human flaw. He wrote a software program, now called Social Media Predator, to manage and direct a virtual army of fake Twitter accounts. The software let him change names, profile pictures, and biographies quickly to fit any need [26]. While there is sufficient evidence to conclude that bots from multiple operators attempted to influence the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, it has proven difficult to ascertain the full extent of the impact and attribute the bots back to their sources. According to Alessandro Bessi and Emilio Ferrera, “Unfortunately, most of the time, it has proven impossible to determine who’s behind these types of operations. Governments, organizations, and other entities with sufficient resources can obtain the technological capabilities to deploy thousands of social bots and use them to their advantage, either to support or to attack particular political figures or candidates” [26].