this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2026
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Asklemmy
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You look at it as a social media platform. The people who run bot accounts, have specific goals they want to achieve such as swaying public opinion on a specific topic. They could have been paid by a corporation to do damage control on a negative event that happened.
When they downvote you and upvote their other bots, their content gets higher visibility.
And even the votes themselves can help sway public opinion to a small degree.
An otherwise popular opinion may appear less popular if it has a few bot-made downvotes attached to it.