interesting. I wonder if this is why internet subcultures like reddit, facebook, twitter, lemmy, etc didn't start out as toxic but became or are becoming toxic communities that provides incentives to act on psychopathic ideologies.
user engagement is important on any social platform, but who benefits the most is debatable. this is why trolls are so successful. they directly benefit from interactions and gain a sense of superiority by controlling the narrative.
on the other side, bot accounts use trolling techniques to strengthen or weaken social opinion on a grand scale based on what has been requested. The use of AI only improves the efficacy of the end result.
I wonder if the internet today would be more similar to what the internet was like before social media was a thing if "bots" never existed.