We should assume that there are thousands (or more) different operations taking place to manipulate public opinion and perceptions on Internet at any given time. These will range in sophistication from one crank with a handful of alts engaging with themselves, to extremely elaborate and well-staffed operations. They will also range in access, from outsiders brute forcing CAPTCHAs to create bot accounts attempting to circumvent heuristic detection algorithms, to insiders operating with the assistance of the platforms, with some middle of the road cases where the platforms might not be assisting them, but notice what they're doing and decide not to intervene.
The term 'botting' itself is far too vague IMO. There are many different tactics which fall under this umbrella, from shilling (not really even employing bots) to vote/engagement manipulation (100% automated), to psycological operations (i.e. staging a debate between two apparently unrelated users in a controversial thread to construct a strawman and incinerate it), which may or may not be backed up by engagement manipulation to boost visibility. The tactics vary a great amount from platform to platform too. On Twitter you can get something trending by having a bunch of fake accounts tweet it, but it leaves evidence, meanwhile on Reddit it is possible to manipulate the feed with complete anonymity (to the public, anyway) if you have enough fake accounts to throw upvotes and downvotes around. Finally, the platforms themselves manipulate what people see, and employ tons of automation in their moderation strategies.
We should assume that there are thousands (or more) different operations taking place to manipulate public opinion and perceptions on Internet at any given time. These will range in sophistication from one crank with a handful of alts engaging with themselves, to extremely elaborate and well-staffed operations. They will also range in access, from outsiders brute forcing CAPTCHAs to create bot accounts attempting to circumvent heuristic detection algorithms, to insiders operating with the assistance of the platforms, with some middle of the road cases where the platforms might not be assisting them, but notice what they're doing and decide not to intervene.
The term 'botting' itself is far too vague IMO. There are many different tactics which fall under this umbrella, from shilling (not really even employing bots) to vote/engagement manipulation (100% automated), to psycological operations (i.e. staging a debate between two apparently unrelated users in a controversial thread to construct a strawman and incinerate it), which may or may not be backed up by engagement manipulation to boost visibility. The tactics vary a great amount from platform to platform too. On Twitter you can get something trending by having a bunch of fake accounts tweet it, but it leaves evidence, meanwhile on Reddit it is possible to manipulate the feed with complete anonymity (to the public, anyway) if you have enough fake accounts to throw upvotes and downvotes around. Finally, the platforms themselves manipulate what people see, and employ tons of automation in their moderation strategies.
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