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As the previous section illustrated, the term “bot” can have several possible meanings. However, the most common popular notion of the bot – that of the heavily argumentative troll account or inauthentic social media account operated by a human – is technically not necessarily an automated bot at all: these accounts are more correctly called “sock puppet” or “troll” accounts (Gorwa & Guilbeault, 2018). (Note that the meaning of the terms bot, troll, and sock puppet may differ significantly from language to language. For instance, in Polish, many speakers use “bot” and “troll” interchangeably to indicate a manipulative online social media account, whether automated or manually controlled (Gorwa, 2017a).)¹⁴

We highlight these misuses and ambiguities in order to help the reader clearly understand what the term “bot” may mean when encountered in the wild. In this book, when we use the term bot, we will always be referring to a program that is partially or fully automated.