Coronavirus has shoved everyone online and now bots are appearing…

Not even a few minutes before I started writing this, there was a livestream involving a political candidate. In the stream’s Facebook comments, I saw literal bots shouting canned messages demanding that the candidate give up. Disparaging messages that I know die-hard and casual fans of that candidate wouldn’t be caught dead making.

How did I know they were bots? I looked at their profile.

Nothing hidden to the public. Nothing guarded to only friends.

Zero activity except profile pictures (which were stolen, Google reverse image search confirms). Zero friends. A network of interconnected bots commenting one-word nothing-compliments to their stolen profile photos to completely circumvent the Facebook fake account countermeasures.

Incidentally, I’ve personally observed that the parents of my friends make the exact same short compliments that could be confused as one-word-nothings to their childrens’ profile photos.

This is what social engineering looks like. This is how we’re being influenced.