While automatic control of computerized interfaces should surprise no one, “bot”-like behavior is not limited to computers and isn’t new. One should always be

While automatic control of computerized interfaces should surprise no one, “bot”-like behavior is not limited to computers and isn’t new. One should always be skeptical even when something comes from humans: for instance, a “customer review” could be a paid reviewer, or someone talking on the nightly news could be essentially controlled by the puppet strings of their organization and not really voicing their own position. Ideally no one ever puts too much faith in what they hear from a handful of people because that is not statistically significant (there are literally hundreds of millions of people in the U.S. alone, billions in the world; sample sizes must be gigantic). Where “millions” of accounts become dangerous is when trying to determine if even a “statistically significant sample size” is legitimate. I seriously doubt that most organizations ever come close to finding a large enough sample in the first place before reporting a finding. And yet, if they primarily look at online postings instead of actually talking to people, it’s likely that even a large sample is totally messed up. That should concern everyone.