When it comes to the online world, it’s never been harder to distinguish between what’s true, and what’s…not.

The way a story is presented to us can significantly influence our perceptions. Just ask anyone who works in public relations (PR). Among other things, PR experts work to influence how an audience feels about a brand, a narrative, a personality or a place. Famously ‘good in a crisis,’ they can help celebrities, politicians and companies recover from a public disaster.

While traditional PR crisis strategies involve careful planning and targeted execution, a new digital player uses sheer scale to influence public opinion: PR bots.

Today, I’ll take you through how these digital armies can be programmed to target our social media algorithms and the content we do/don’t get served.

Before we go any further, wot is a bot?

Bots are computer programs that operate on social media platforms. They’re programmed to perform automated, repetitive tasks over a network. Bot posts can often read like something a real person would’ve written, so they can be hard to spot. They’re deliberately designed to mimic human behaviour…only, bots can generate content at a speed and scale us mere mortals simply can’t.

Just check any popular Instagram account. Within seconds of posting, celebrity accounts will be inundated with dozens of comments from ‘users’, usually promoting a financial service, or porn.

Don’t get me wrong, some bots can make our lives easier. For example, chatbots like ChatGPT, or ‘virtual assistant’ bots like Siri and Alexa. But others, like the pyramid scheme bots of Instagram, are... less helpful.

A new report by IT security firm Imperva found that nearly half of all online traffic in 2023 came from fake users – bots. “Bad bots, in particular, now comprise nearly one-third of all traffic.” These ‘bad bots’ are programmed to defraud and scam users.

So, we now know with certainty that these ‘bots’ can negatively impact real people online. But, how?

To find out more about how bots can be used to influence how we think and feel about issues, from celebrity spats to global conflicts, I reached out to an expert.

Dr. Sophia Melanson Ricciardone from Canada’s McMaster University did a PhD on the rise of “botaganda” — when bot ‘armies’ generate mass content to saturate social media feeds, and manipulate audiences.

Her research focussed on how automated accounts can manipulate algorithms to serve us familiar or appealing content. Ultimately, she says this can persuade us to act against our own best interests.

Dr. Ricciardone told me about something called ‘hashtag flooding,’ which “is essentially a tweet containing nothing but popularised keywords and catchphrases in the form of multiple hashtags”.

This tactic, as well as the rapid resharing of human posts (as in, thousands and thousands of times a day), can create an illusion of widespread support or opposition for specific viewpoints, “as though the idea embedded in the tweet came from grassroots popularisation.”

The concept of ‘herd’ mentality comes into play here, which (put simply) is the idea that individuals conform to the dominant views of their community.

“This is because we are social beings who depend on one another for survival... Our natural reflex is to ‘go with the flow,’ especially if that flow seems to confirm our underlying biases. That’s how bots capture our attention,” Dr. Ricciardone says.

Two years ago, Johnny Depp filed a lawsuit against his ex-wife Amber Heard. The case related to an opinion article Heard wrote for The Washington Post, where she alleged she had experienced domestic abuse. Heard didn’t name Depp, but he launched defamation proceedings against her, arguing he was identifiable from the article. Depp denies claims he physically abused Heard.

A jury in Fairfax County, Virginia, ultimately sided with Depp, and Heard was sued for defaming him.

The proceedings were publicly streamed online. As the case played out in a courtroom, the internet mounted its own unofficial trial of Amber Heard. Millions of tweets against Heard and in defence of Depp flooded social media.

Xavier Greenwood is the producer/host behind the “Who Trolled Amber” podcast – a six-part investigation from UK media organisation Tortoise. At the time, he said many people felt there was something “unusual” about the “scale and intensity” of abuse against Heard. The Tortoise team analysed a database of over one million tweets targeting Heard during the defamation proceedings.

Greenwood said,“Some of the main themes were that Amber Heard was a liar, she was seeking attention by accusing Depp of domestic violence, that she was the abuser herself.”

His team found more than half a million tweets were ‘inauthentic’ – posted either from a spam account, or ‘amplified’ in an inauthentic way, for example, being re-shared thousands of times.

“On TikTok, there was a hashtag… #JusticeforJohnny Depp that was viewed 15. 7 billion times. #JusticeforAmberHeard was viewed a fraction of that.”

Greenwood gave me an example of some bot-generated tweets he found, like one that had been reshared 22,000 times. “Another example is one which was tweeted by an account with two followers, and got retweeted 9,000 times.”

Greenwood thinks a calculated attack against Heard was coordinated by several people. He suggested Johnny Depp fans might have paid for fake bot accounts to support their favourite actor. There are also claims Saudi Arabian authorities were involved, but you’ll have to listen to the podcast for more on that.

Greenwood concluded: “If you can attack a celebrity who has an enormous amount of resources as Amber Heard did, what's to stop someone doing the same thing when it comes to attacking a politician, or when it comes to trying to sway an election?”

That’s when I started thinking about democracy.

Picture a cluster of bot accounts, programmed to stir the political pot and stoke division online.

Australian researchers at CyberCX recently uncovered a cluster of at least 5,000 fake ‘X’ accounts linked to a Chinese university and AI company. The accounts were exclusively creating or resharing content, disinformation and conspiracy theories related to these five topics:

Katherine Manstead, Executive Director of CyberCX, said China’s recent bot operations aim to amplify extreme views and weaken social cohesion in Western democracies.

“Make no mistake, this is a weapon that could be used to harm and undermine democracy in countries like Australia, the United States, and the United Kingdom,” she said

Last month, the Biden administration charged Russian media executives over an alleged targeted online campaign to influence voters in the U.S.

Attorney General Merrick Garland accused state broadcaster RT of paying a U.S.-based content creation firm to “create and distribute content to US audiences with hidden Russian government messaging”.

It comes after U.S. officials seized 32 internet domain names that were “covertly” targeting specific demographics on social media, and promoting “AI-generated false narratives” to those groups.

Garland said: “The American people are entitled to know when a foreign power is attempting to exploit our country's free exchange of ideas in order to send around its own propaganda”.

Dr. Sophia Melanson Ricciardone has urged voters everywhere to inform themselves about the ways inline public discourse can be “distorted in strategic and calculated ways” ahead of an election.

As for what comes next, Xavier Greenwood said we’re in largely unchartered waters. “What we saw with the Amber Heard trial, we may well continue to see in an even more intense way in the future,” he told me.

“The genie is out of the box.”

Hey everyone, Co-founder Sam here!

Well, did you miss me? I’ve just come back from my honeymoon in Mexico (I used this spot to overshare about my wedding, so I may as well keep it rolling!) – and it was a sensational trip, though not without a bit of drama.

You see, my wallet got pinched about halfway through the trip, including my physical Up card (very useful for those moments overseas when tapping my card wasn’t an option).

What happened next made me very glad to be part of the Up community. I jumped onto the app, immediately reported the card as lost or stolen, and ordered a new card to be ready for me when I got back to Sydney.

In moments like that, having simple, clear, and decisive control over your money matters. The card controls we’ve told you about in the Up mobile app really worked – and nothing beats a true story. To learn more about how Up is the key to traveling (safely) overseas without the fees, click here.