Brad Hayes, a computer scientist at MIT, explained, “A bot army can be utilized for a number of dishonest purposes, chief amongst them, misrepresenting public sentiment about whichever topics the controller has interest in. If 3 million people started tweeting in favor of or against a particular topic, would it shift public perception? What if those same 3 million people targeted every source you use for information? It’s fair to say that this kind of written ‘show of force’ can certainly alter perceptions.”508
A Latin American political operative named Andrés Sepúlveda admits he has used bots to influence people in the build-up to major elections in Mexico, Colombia, and Nicaragua. In 2014 he was sentenced to ten years in prison for espionage, using malicious software, and conspiracy, but from his prison cell he gave an interview to Bloomberg News where he said, “When I realized that people believed what the Internet says more than reality, I discovered that I had the power to make people believe almost anything.”509 He concluded, “I worked with presidents, public figures with great power, and did many things with absolutely no regrets because I did it with full conviction and under a clear objective, to end dictatorship and socialist governments in Latin America.”510
A study at Oxford University in England looked at bots tweeting just before the UK-EU Referendum which resulted in Britain voting to leave the European Union and found that of 300,000 Twitter accounts they included in their study, one percent of them were responsible for one third of all the tweets about the Brexit debate.511 Such a high level of activity from such a small sample led the researchers to believe that the accounts were run by bots. They said there were some bots tweeting support for Remain, and other bots tweeting support for Brexit.512
It’s pretty much expected in today’s social media world that some marketing firms may use Twitter bots to generate the appearance of “buzz” about the little-known singers or albums they are hired to promote. Bots are most likely used by marketing agencies to promote the albums of some well-known singers and television shows on major networks. One blogger posted screen shots of dozens of Twitter accounts tweeting exactly the same thing at exactly the same time, all promoting Rachel Maddow’s show on MSNBC along with the hashtag #Maddow.513
To ‘trend’ on Twitter is seen as a sign of success in the entertainment and news business, and most people would probably do anything to make it happen. Of course Twitter is trying to eliminate the use of bots, but it is unknown how effective they are at filtering them out.
A Super PAC supporting Hillary Clinton called Correct the Record, founded by David Brock, who also started the left-wing Media Matters ‘watchdog group,’ released an army of paid trolls onto the Internet during the 2016 election to tweet and comment on Facebook (and in the comment sections of news websites) about how great Hillary Clinton was, and to respond directly to people criticizing her.
The Los Angeles Times noted, “In effect, the effort aims to spend a large sum of money to increase the amount of trolling that already exists online.”514 During the election Trump’s support online was tremendous, and his use of Twitter has become a part of the daily news cycles. Bernie Sanders had legions of social media savvy millennials who constantly defended and promoted him online, but Hillary’s supporters were much older and didn’t use social media or the comment sections of websites, so the Super PAC decided to artificially create the online support for her.
“It is meant to appear to be coming organically from people and their social media networks in a groundswell of activism, when in fact it is highly paid and highly tactical,” said Brian Donahue, CEO of Craft Media/Digital, a political consulting company.515 “That is what the Clinton campaign has always been about,” he said. “It runs the risk of being exactly what their opponents accuse them of being: a campaign that appears to be populist but is a smokescreen that is paid and brought to you by lifetime political operatives and high-level consultants.”516
David Brock, the man behind the trolling program, is known for his political dirty tricks, and so this plan was right up his alley. On a side note, Super PACs are prohibited by law from working directly with campaigns and are supposed to be completely independent entities, but Wikileaks emails revealed that Hillary’s campaign was working with David Brock’s Correct The Record in an apparent violation of federal law.517
Actor Tim Robbins, who supported Bernie Sanders, once tweeted, “Dear @CorrectRecord operatives, Thank you for following today’s talking points. Your check is in the mail. Signed, @davidbrockdc,” in a response to what he thought were replies to his tweets by the paid trolls.518 He later deleted the tweet. David Karpf, a professor of media and public affairs at George Washington University, appeared to defend the paid trolling effort, saying the Super PAC was, “using the tools they have at their disposal” and that, “In this day and age of campaigning, they absolutely have to do it.”519
Unfortunately, that’s the society we’re living in now, where paid trolls and bots are being used to promote or defend certain causes or political candidates online in order to artificially screw the appearance of what people are thinking and saying on social media. It’s truly a Brave New World.
YouTube
YouTube is the second most popular website in the world according to Alexa, the industry standard in web traffic analytics,520 and it is so large that every minute over 400 hours of video is uploaded there.521 It was launched in 2005 and for years most people just saw YouTube as a place to post funny cat videos, or “fail” videos of people slipping and falling or getting injured when attempting stupid stunts; but others saw it as a powerful platform to share news and commentary.
Google bought YouTube in 2006 for $1.6 billion dollars,522 and it quickly became the most popular video sharing site in the world. For years it functioned primarily as a user-generated platform, meaning it hosted amateur videos posted by average every day people. Independent content creators, often called “YouTubers” would soon build huge grass roots followings with very little cost by making videos ranging from vlogs telling stupid stories, product reviews, do it yourself home improvement, and news and commentary. The videos are monetized through Google’s AdSense, which places small banner ads on them or short “pre-roll” ads that play before the videos. For each ad that’s shown, the creator gets a fraction of a penny. While it’s difficult to make enough money to pay your bills doing this, a few of the top creators earn millions of dollars a year.523
As of April 2016 there were over 2000 YouTube channels with at least a million subscribers,524 and channels like PewDiePie (57 million), Watchmojo (15 million), Ryan’s Toys Review (9 million), Philip DeFranco (5 million) and others get more viewers per video than many major television shows.
My channel now has over a million subscribers and other conservative channels have recently been thriving like Next News Network, Infowars, Steven Crowder, Rebel Media, and Paul Joseph Watson. Many young female conservatives have gained large followings as well, like Lauren Southern, Roaming Millennial, and Brittany Pettibone.