The split in MAGA over the Jeffrey Epstein Files issue has led to chatbot programmed troll farm accounts in a social media botnet to start putting out confusing and conflicting posts. I’m glad this is getting mainstream and independent media attention, that’s a good thing. Hundreds of maga botnet accounts on the app formerly known as twitter is the tip of a huge iceberg and not an isolated thing, it’s representative of a great deal of social media unfortunately.
I’ve spent years trying to tell people I know and have interacted with about the inauthentic stuff on social media. People are surprisingly resistant to believe their faves are fake, or that they’re being manipulated by paid influencers. Sometimes they’ve lashed out angrily at me when I’ve tried to inform people about inauthentic accounts, paid influencers, and various big accounts on social media. In my experience, even after there’s plenty of evidence an account is behaving inauthentically, even prominent people will continue following favourite sketch accounts.
This of course leads to people being hesitant to even bother trying to warn people about this stuff, when you can expect that most people will not welcome the information at all, in fact they’ll attack the messenger.