If you didn't already know -- and I wouldn't blame you, because this story seems to have a suspiciously small presence online -- it was recently revealed that a research group from the University of Zurich created fake accounts that encourage resentment towards feminism and other progressive politics. These fake accounts typically posed as centrists or liberals with serious doubts about actual centrist/liberal views. Notable accounts acted as male sexual assault victims of female predators, men who'd been wronged by women in relationships, black men who disliked the BLM movement, gay men who were cool with the Catholic church....the list goes on. The group claims they did this to study how fake accounts can influence opinions.
From the AAAS on the subject:
Chaz Arnett, a legal scholar at the University of Maryland who studies race and technology, is especially critical of the researchers’ use of LLMs to impersonate members of groups such as Black people or sexual assault survivors. “The very act of presuming that you could pick up and put on a fundamental identity belittles the lived experiences of those groups,” Arnett says. He calls it a kind of “digital Blackface.”
The "study" went on for four months before the researchers finally let the subreddit moderators know about it. The mods made a massive post to warn their human users, blocked the bots, and have demanded an apology from the team.
