Those bots are expensive and complicated to operate at scale. Some topics are there to make them look legitimate, others because you have large clients supporti

Those bots are expensive and complicated to operate at scale. Some topics are there to make them look legitimate, others because you have large clients supporting a change in opinion and willing to spend social-media agencies to promote it — or discredit it with a ham-fisted campaign. It’s hard to sort them apart but that example, for me, echoes a BBC documentary/sci-fi speculation from 10 years ago about cannabis legalisation and more generally licensing psycho-active molecules for entertainment purposes. The title was “If drugs were legal” or “When” as most specialists had little doubt this would happen soon. Both cigarette and pharmaceutical companies came out as very ready for the idea, with teams dedicated to lobbying for it, of course, but marketing, products ready for the day. Overall, they were clear large players with established industrial assets and experience in large-scale distribution would completely take over. They even speculated that some tests on new drugs were done without permissions. A couple of years later the “Bath salt” craze and the mention most of those were molecules no one had seen before also echoed quite loudly.