this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2026
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All of the things in that image are tactics that have been being used for nearly a decade now. It's not a thing unique to AI.
LLMs have only made it so that the bad operators who are pushing these kinds of operations now have a force multiplier.
We have already have a bot problem, but the capabilities were such that only a human would be able to draft arguments and posts while the vast majority of bots were simply there to manipulate the algorithm/votes so that their content is signal boosted.
Now a single person can control a large amount of accounts which can actively respond and argue like a real person in addition to the existing vote manipulation bot swarm.
Look at how many 'people' suddenly appeared out of the woodwork after the Minnesota shooting and started posting despite being inactive for months. Go look on any big instance at the number of communities which have moderators squatting on popular community names despite them having 0 subscribers, traffic or posts.
I don't doubt that there are entire instances being run by these operations so that, much like the ever famous r/conservative, they can control the echo chamber.
LLMs are just the latest tool in their arsenal, but this tactic of manipulating social media is taking place right now.