what do our observations on left and right politics mean concretely in light of this type of manipulation? consider, bots exploit what social media was ALREADY BUILT TO DO. what are you observing when you’re observing social media? baseline • legacy media abandonment of long form bipartisan discourse • insulated development of advanced positions on niche ideas • attention economy incentives CONFLICT = ATTENTION = INFLUENCE From the article: • Approximately half of the profiles pushing the case for herd immunity are artificial accounts. These bot or bot-like accounts are generally characterized as engaging in abnormally high levels of retweets and low content diversity. • The high level of bot-like behavior attributed to support for the Great Barrington Declaration on social media indicates the conversation is manipulated and inorganic in comparison to the scientific consensus-based conversation opposing herd immunity theories. A consequence of high frequency of inorganic activity is the creation of a majority illusion (when certain members within a social network give the appearance that an idea or opinion is more popular than it is).