--- title: Bots, troll farms and deepfakes in elections — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Bots, troll farms and deepfakes in elections», a lesson of the politics course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: A bot is a computer program that posts by itself while pretending to be a person, and a troll farm is an office of people pa --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/politics/32-bots-troll-farms-and-deepfakes/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Politics](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/politics/) / Bots, troll farms and deepfakes in ele… # Bots, troll farms and deepfakes in elections Lesson 32 of the politics course of Mova's primary school: 16 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/politics/32-bots-troll-farms-and-deepfakes/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/politics/32-bots-troll-farms-and-deepfakes/0/) — A bot is a computer program that posts by itself while pretending to be a person, and a troll farm is an office of people paid to post under fake names. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/politics/32-bots-troll-farms-and-deepfakes/1/) — Picture a school vote where one kid wears ten different hats and votes ten times: it looks like a crowd, but it is one person with many masks, and that is what a swarm of fake accounts does online. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/politics/32-bots-troll-farms-and-deepfakes/2/) — A deepfake is a picture, video or voice made with AI to look like a real person doing or saying something they never did; extra fingers or a mouth that does not match the words can give it away, but the fakes keep getting better. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/politics/32-bots-troll-farms-and-deepfakes/3/) — The flip side matters too: because fakes exist, people caught on a real video can shout "it's AI!", so "it's fake" is also a claim to check. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/politics/32-bots-troll-farms-and-deepfakes/4/) — You can still check: who first shared it, does trusted news have it, and what does the official election office say? - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/politics/32-bots-troll-farms-and-deepfakes/5/) — A bot is a computer program that posts by itself as if it were a person; hundreds of almost identical comments in one minute from accounts with no photos are a warning sign. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/politics/32-bots-troll-farms-and-deepfakes/6/) — It was reported by US investigators that a group in Russia called the Internet Research Agency ran many fake accounts pretending to be Americans around the 2016 election; such a group is often called a troll farm. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/politics/32-bots-troll-farms-and-deepfakes/7/) — People disagree about how much that meddling changed: some say it reached millions, others say it is hard to show it changed many votes. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/politics/32-bots-troll-farms-and-deepfakes/8/) — News reports said that in New Hampshire in 2024 a robocall used an AI copy of President Biden's voice to tell people not to vote in a primary, and that the people behind it were fined. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/politics/32-bots-troll-farms-and-deepfakes/9/) — AI can make pictures of real people doing things they never did; strange hands, blurry writing and odd backgrounds are clues, but clues will not always work. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/politics/32-bots-troll-farms-and-deepfakes/10/) — A deepfake is a fake video, picture or voice made with AI; lips slightly out of time, a too-smooth face or a flat voice can be signs. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/politics/32-bots-troll-farms-and-deepfakes/11/) — The liar's dividend means people use the existence of fakes to deny things that really happened. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/politics/32-bots-troll-farms-and-deepfakes/12/) — An account that posts day and night only about politics, with a stock photo and a new account, may be a bot, but no single sign proves it. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/politics/32-bots-troll-farms-and-deepfakes/13/) — A message saying voting day has moved is a common trick; the real date and place come from the official election office. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/politics/32-bots-troll-farms-and-deepfakes/14/) — Astroturfing means making a fake crowd look like real support; many accounts made last week that follow nobody are a warning sign. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/politics/32-bots-troll-farms-and-deepfakes/15/) — Some cameras and apps are starting to add content labels that show whether a picture was made or changed with AI, though this is new. - ← previous: [Propaganda and fake news](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/politics/31-propaganda-and-fake-news/) - next →: [Cherry-picked clips and clickbait headlines](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/politics/33-cherry-picked-clips-and-clickbait/) - ↑ back to [Politics](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/politics/)