Great strides were taken towards stopping the corrosive impact of Russian “bots” on social media platforms today with the discovery that each fake profile has a minimum of five smaller fake profiles inside.
“It’s ingenious,” LCD’s IT whiz, Dr Whiz, commented, “and it goes a great way towards explaining how groups such as Activate and Moggmentum appear to have a bizarrely high number of members online.”
Bizarre in this context means a number greater than zero.
“We’ve known for a while that all the Nigel Farages are grown in a computer bot farm in the Kremlin, but to discover Activate’s six members on Facebook are all one fake profile neatly packed with another five smaller ones makes the puzzle easier to solve.”
It’s believed the clever design, which is believed to take inspiration from the traditional Russian dolls given as gifts and found in many living rooms around the west, explains why there were so many curiously ignorant people arguing that Brexit would lead to a land full of golden unicorns online during and after the EUref.
“The trick is to block them as soon as they attempt to engage with you. Once you talk to a bot it unpacks itself and you suddenly find half a dozen profiles who have not even a rudimentary understanding of the EU shouting they’ve won.”
The irritant is not yet solved, Dr Whiz warns.
“It’s easy enough to spot the latest generation of them on social media platforms these days. They invariably begin any statement with the unbelievable phrase, ‘although I voted remain in the referendum’, before talking barely comprehensible bollocks.
And it’s a good thing the PM has told Putin she’s onto him now too. Not that it matters, as Brexit still seems to mean Brexit..”