Are they just set up by people/companies to rack up extra followers or is there some other reason for them?
In: 8
There are a lot of different types of bots, which can be used for all kind of purposes, from fun, to useful, to ridiculous, up to downright dangerous…
You have probably already encountered bots on Reddit, like the “remindme” bot, which are actually useful. There are some that automatically fix bad links or post a synnopsis of a linked Wikipedia article, etc. Also some that remind you of typical spelling mistakes, etc.
Then there are bots that just upvote everything certain users post. If many of them are used, this can make it seem as if there is a general consensus that what this user says is right. Such bots are misleading, and are typically banned for good reason (though difficult to spot, if they are done right).
The next step are bots that just pretend that they are users, and post stuff that fits into a specific narrative of the party that controls them. If there are suddenly lots of “Putin is right, Ukraine shoud just give up the fight”-posts appearing, you can be sure that this is not a sudden change of mood in the population, but that there are bots doing their work.
Of course, usually they are more suble than this: starting to stir up resentment first, without being open to their goals, but the result is the same.
tl:dr – not all bots are evil, but evil bots are out there!
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