We Tried to Detect Bots in 500 Comments. We Found a More Interesting Problem.

[AZJonnie]

3. The ones that are likely to put their foot down on something like this will be advertisers

Advertisers expect to pay rates based on actual eyeballs/real people with money to spend. As non-human, BS bot posts on a platform rise as a % of total, it will lead to the advertiser's conversion rates on these ads falling lower and lower. This will lead to them be less willing to pay what the website is asking to advertise on them.

On today's internet, there's so much end-to-end tracking of the whole advertising/engagement/conversion process that the advertisers have means by which to determine whether it's likely a particular provider has an inordinate amount of bot-posts simply because their ads there are underperforming (not leading to conversions). So the people who run the sites DO have an incentive to cut back on the BS level because they're not going to get away with misrepresenting their 'traffic' (which bots contribute to) forever.