my tinfoil conspiracy theory is that entities with malicious goals deploy bot nets to like, share, and comment on tweets (or not) en masse to manipulate what people think and write through audience capture

It's not a conspiracy, and it's well documented on how it can be done and measured: https://ncr.mae.ufl.edu/papers/auto15_2.pdf

The simpler social engineering example (but maybe the harder to crack on) is bots unfollowing right you after you express any "inconvenient" position.

Definitely not a theory, fwiw I think it's a business model to gain an edge

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