Today bots, trolls, and cyborgs could simulate a climate of opinion, of support or hate, that was more insidious, more all-enveloping than the old broadcast media. And this simulation then would be reinforced as people modified their behavior to fall in line with what they thought was reality. An Oxford University analysis of bots calls this process “manufacturing consensus.”10 It is not that one online account changes someone’s mind; it’s that en masse they create an ersatz normality.
