Computational Propaganda Research Project: Troops, Trolls and Troublemakers

"As a result, many people have gone back to operating the accounts themselves, rather than automating them. For example, in Mexico, when many of the government‐sponsored spam‐bots that were used to target journalists and spread disinformation on social media were blocked, human agents went back to operating the accounts themselves (O’Carrol, 2017)." [PDF file]

 

We call them Peñabots since 2014
illustration by @mspolita