>>37353500>if they did a whole "study" on itAs a person who wrote a few whitepapers, articles: I can assure you that for most of them almost 0 effort goes into it besides pulling it out of your ass.
They probably tried for a few weeks at most and then bam article.
Also why is it surprising at this day and age that some group of peoples try to manipulate online conversations? Why is it surprising that there is always someone monitoring all activity in the internet? This is not new.
Also just look at /b/ and what that is nowdays, compare it to what it was even just 5 years ago. I'm pretty sure 90% of the posts there are made by spambots, and even shitty ones at that. There they don't even try to derail conversations, just simply flood the board with repulsive content (which is something say considering its /b/..) and drive away legitimate users.
Now that its happening with with /pol/ too. I'm not surprised at all.
Also, I don't care. 4chan is long time not the free speech central what it was, especially if you touch any politics. And luckily ponies are not politics yet. If we forget about the whole nazi, lgbt, foalcon stuff.