Welcome to the Eric Erickson Show podcast, Our 2.

Hello, America.

Welcome.

It is Eric Erickson here across the nation from my new office, no doubt, no less.

The phone number.

We'll be on the program?

877973-7-4-25. You can always text Eric E-R-I-C-K to 33-777-7. Get the show notes,

the podcast, the live stream, all that. Follow me everywhere. I am ubiquitous online.

I mentioned this story a little bit the other day,

but I really, let me make sure, click the link, pull this up. I am a professional, but sometimes I get distracted. You are undoubtedly aware. I dare say it would be hard pressed not to know that in 2016 there were Russian bots.

Now let's let's talk about what a Russian bot is.

There were accounts.

There were Twitter accounts that were run by Russians.

Oftentimes they were automated accounts called bots, where if someone in the United States

tweeted something related to a topic of interest for them, then they would rush out information

and respond to that person. I, for example, in 2016, had a regular occurrence of

if I was tweeting about presidential candidates, including Donald Trump, I would be flooded with

very odd accounts that had been created in 2008, 2009, had never been used, and then all of a

sudden, in January, February, March of 2016, sprung to life as if people were just waiting.

And they would be deeply competitive.

They would fill up with links.

They were very hostile.

...