Because harmful bots are sometimes difficult to detect, and because they affect so many different corners of the interent, it can also be difficult to measure their impact.
According to the 2020 media manipulation survey from the Oxford Internet Institute, organized social media manipulation
campaigns were found in each of the 81 surveyed countries. The report states that public announcements made by Facebook
and Twitter between January 2019 and December 2020 revealed more than 317,000 accounts and pages had been removed by
the platforms during that time. The report also found 48 instances of private companies deploying computational propoganda
on behalf of a political actor.
This information alone shows the potential influence can have on our day-to-day lives.
In 2024, a musician from North Carolina was charged with defrauding streaming services of $10 million by using AI and automated bots. It was alleged that the musician placed hundreds of AI-generated songs by fake bands on multiple streaming platforms, then used bots to stream the songs and collect royalties.
You can read more about the ways bots are being used across the internet on the News section of this site.