A'gon joke...

The term bot comes from social media when automated scripts would run to pollute a discussion, especially based on keywords. It has been expanded to mean insincere participation in a discussion threads, especially from commercial or government funded message farms.  There's a huge amount of research on this related to Twitter if you are interested.  Google "twitter misinformation bots" and I'm sure you'll find lots of it. 

It is difficult for us end-users to prove anything about bots and their behavior, especially on individual posts, unless it’s glaringly obvious, like "I found a place that lets you print free money and I wanted to share the URL with you..."

Observing the forums over time however you can get a good sense of the shift to bot-ness.

In all honesty, mine was barely funny....even to me..

So, @thecarpathian ...you're absolutely right. *s*  (No +; it was just the 'try' aspect...'a Zen arrow into the dark, likely hitting one's own ass...' ;)

("...his jokes fell like leaden farts upon the stage...")... too true, too often...

It would seem odd to launch an AI'd bot into forums as this, if only to generate some off-the-non-existent-wall form of vague disillusionment over new posters, or even spoofing real ones...and they'd likely be better at it than yours truly. *l*

Now, if there was an on-going snit over some political flame, a moth-bot may be drawn here; but when there's muchomore elsewhere....?

'It's just highly illogical', Spockishly...

Free money....right....anyone who remembers the closing scenario of The Magic Christian should agree that even 'free' has a cost....

I'm talking (posting) about "software based" BOTS.

I can only find one remaining thread initiated by these BOTS (the others have been deleted).

Many of the BOTS have "joined" the same sites (Roku, AllKpop, Canon Global, Net Gear - et cetera and to name just a few) within minutes of initiating their Audiogon account?

They typically made a single post and that was it.

However, some of them came back with a 2nd post (reply to their thread) with a link to a product/service) and then that was it.

DeKay

@dekay  Can you give me the name of the one thread still active that was created by the BOT?