There was a bit on NPR about that first thing this morning. They were talking about "bots" that apparently auto respond in some way? We have lots of bots here--I was told they just look for words and phrases that they can use in search engines like Google. Are bots able to do other things as well?
You can see the amazing number of bots that crawl this site by going to the Members online section and clicking View all online. They are all just indexors of content OR they are "ranking this site" for personal interests of the members. The latter is becoming more popular in that advertisers use this to reach their client base. Mostly harmless and kinda funny because USMB comes back on the first page of a lot of searches using "wirty dords".
THESE supposed political bots are different. They are NOT member accounts. They are Ad Services that TARGET subscriber sites BECAUSE of their political interest. Its really a tempest in a teapot actually. From the actual testimony from FB and the Twit, it amounted to just a couple million "page views" and a grand total of some $140,000 or so was spent by some agency. Page VIEWS are not ad clicks. The ratio is somewhere around 1 in 10,000 page views/click with a WIDE variance by sites.. And these became yet another page border ad that everyone ignores. It's in the freaking noise level of the ad density that's common on USMB.
We ALSO now know from the Twit and FB, that immediately after the election, the SAME agency responsible for this "anti-Clinton ad buy" starting running exclusively content to smear the new Trump Admin. Which follows what I've claimed all along. That this Russian tactic is aimed at sowing Doubt, Fear, and Distrust of the whole American political institution.
They don't really CARE who is in charge, they want to use our own fighting, division, and polarizing and just NUDGE us over the edge.
Like we did when the old Soviet Union was in political crisis. Ain't about favorites. It's about helping us DESTROY the US political system. THAT'S the goal. WE put ourselves into this weak and volatile position. They just can't resist paying us back..