I was wondering why bots are so bad but I just read that in one case it took redditors about a week to realize that the "opponent" was a bot. Scary! Given the echo chamber nature of many political subs I guess there is a big risk that these bots will be abused in the future whenever elections are coming up. I now also remember reading an article about how the clever abuse of the karma system by several "parties" (which can be bots I guess) can signifcantly change the prevailing opinion in a giving subreddit. Even more scary!

On the other hand, especially in the US the marketing strategists of major parties are geniuses anyways. They made people vote against their own interests for decades already. A little help from foreign bot farms may be appreciated. Hard to delineate where the truth ends here, and where the conspiracy theory starts, tho.