Unmasking the Dead Internet: How bots and propaganda hijacked online discourse

The internet is not the place we once knew. Every week, millions of people argue with AI bot networks and paid workers at troll farms like the Internet Research Agency, a Russian organization based in St. Petersburg, which became known for state-sponsored online influence campaigns targeting the United States and Europe. At its peak, the IRA had 300–400 employees working in shifts, generating tens of thousands of posts per month with a $1 million per month budget. During high-profile events in the 2010s, up to one in three interactions on social media were inauthentic — now, with the help of AI, it's exponentially more.