drowning in information. informants who want to. manipulators capitalize on this information overload they deliberately disseminate controversial content on social media making it look like people are sharing it. then so are social creatures. if we feel there's a majority opinion on an issue we tend to side with it. the problem with digital platforms is that they're full of people and opinion. and we're unable to tell if they're genuine or just thoughts churning out $28.00 versions of the same opinion. social bots are computer programs designed to post vast amounts of content on many different platforms they can create fake trends and make certain stories look more relevant than they really are.