Bots, Trolls, & Taking Back Digital Space

How to Cut the Noise, Protect Your Data, Without Retreating from the Digital Frontline

I guess I successfully kicked the hornet’s nest. The bots and trolls are out in force on Facebook, responding to my posts.

What’s the difference between a bot and a troll?

• Bots are mindless, automated spam machines. They don’t care about context, don’t engage in conversation, and often post the same nonsense over and over. Their profiles? Usually empty, or filled with generic content like muscle cars, American flags, or a weird number of kitten pictures. If you look closely, something always feels… off. It gives that “uncanny valley” feel, an AI-generated humanoid but the vibes are creepy.
  

  

  
  

• Trolls are actual people (unfortunately). They lurk in Reddit threads or right-wing forums, where they get alerted to posts that challenge their carefully curated worldview. Then, they swarm, spamming memes, hurling insults, and generally making the internet a worse place. They’re not here for a debate—they're here to flood the conversation with enough garbage to drown out reality. A dead giveaway? A profile pic of Trump surrounded by Secret Service with his fist in the air. It’s practically their uniform.

How to Spot the Noise

If your comments are suddenly overrun with people you don’t know, all parroting the same talking points, odds are you’ve got yourself a bot-and-troll infestation. Here’s how to tell the difference:

• Bots: No real interactions, just mindless repetition. Often have bizarre usernames (think: @PatriotEagleFreedom8472) and copy-pasted posts across multiple pages.

• Trolls: Will engage, but only to derail the conversation. They’ll jump straight to name-calling, absurd whataboutism, or, if all else fails, some all-caps rant about drag queens or Hunter Biden.

Of course, not everyone who disagrees with you is a troll. There are real people with different perspectives who ask genuine good faith questions and challenge opinions with facts. That’s what debate is for and it’s an opportunity to move the middle.But if someone’s just there to spread chaos? Block and move on.

Clean Up Your Digital Footprint

While we’re talking about online messes, let’s talk about digital hygiene—because the less data you hand over, the harder it is for bad actors to manipulate and monetize it.

• Search Yourself: See what’s already out there. If it makes you cringe, clean it up.

• Check Your Privacy Settings: I share my posts with everyone but you can choose to make some things private - family trips for example. And other things public: Fire Elon Musk petitions.

• Delete Old Accounts: That MySpace page you forgot about? It’s probably still holding onto your embarrassing teenage posts. Delete or share those pictures with the rest of us..

• Be Selective About What You Share: Every “What Kind of Potato Are You?” quiz you take is just harvesting your data. They are running psychological tests most of them keyed to finding who has hte highest levels of anxiety so they can manipulate through fear. (“They’re eating the dogs. They’re eating the cats” wasn’t true but it effectively stoked fear and anxiety about people who are different.

• Use Strong Passwords: Yes, you need more than one. Using nonsense phrases only I would understand works best for me- rather than the generated ones.
  Pink-Goot-Hoppy-under-I75!

For a deep dive into scrubbing your digital footprint, check out The Cyber-Cleanse: Take Back Your Digital Footprint—it’s full of practical steps to help reclaim control over your online presence.

Final Thought: Don’t Abandon the Battlefield

It’s tempting to log off and leave Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms to the bots, trolls, and disinformation factories. But if everyone who values truth and democracy leaves, guess who gets to dominate the conversation? Exactly.

Instead, curate your space. Block liberally. Share facts. And don’t let the bad actors win by making these spaces unbearable. We are in an information war, and we can’t cede ground to those who want to destroy our democracy for their financial gain.