The use of these have been growing more and more prevalent and being used on a variety of things. Some people here will think I'm just talking about a certain election and tune out assuming it's fake news but it should be of growing concern to everyone out there no matter your political persuasion.
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-40344208
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-40344208
If you've been chatting about politics on social media recently, there's a good chance you've been part of a conversation that was manipulated by bots, researchers say.
The Oxford Internet Institute (OII) has studied such discussions related to nine places - US, Russia, Ukraine, Germany, Canada, China, Taiwan, Brazil and Poland - on platforms including Twitter and Facebook.
It claims that in all the elections, political crises and national security-related discussions it looked at, there was not one instance where social media opinion had not been manipulated.
....
It remains difficult to quantify the impact such bots have had.
But the OII's researchers believe that "computational propaganda is now one of the most powerful tools against democracy".