this post was submitted on 22 May 2024
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Unpopular opinion: "the other side is just bots" is the new "the other side is just paid protestors."
Bot warfare is a very real and very serious form of information warfare but the idea that any particular political actor is using it disproportionately is pretty difficult to prove. This article, for example, identifies a study which found a third of internet traffic is made up of "bad bots." The study shows that the VAST majority of bad bot traffic is targeting Gaming (virtual currency farming), IT (DDoS), and Data Scraping, with propaganda bots making up less than 2%.
One quibble: it ain't new. I've been accused of being a bot on /r/conspiracy for well over a decade.
But my response has long since been the same: does it matter? Whether I'm a bot has absolutely zero bearing on the truth of what I'm saying. Don't get me wrong, we should definitely do something to curb botting, but I agree with you: if you find yourself using it as a reason to dismiss an argument you're just relying on a garbage ad hominem.