RE: Metamemetics, mind viruses, and AI chatbots
This is actually already happening. Currently, the Russian government uses a huge network of troll twiter and facebook accounts to post pro Russian narratives.
Their primary goal is to confuse the general public in matter related to the interests of Russia. I believe these bots are the primary reason behind Russia's win in the Syria war.
Russian forces in Syria are highly vulnerable to NATO because the country is totally encircled by NATO forces. In such situation, the best course of action is to confuse the enemy general public cause Russia knew that if a significant number of Americans opposed Syria intervention, then the US government will be forced by public pressure to withdraw from the war.
This has also advanced Russia's geopolitical interests. Now Russia is trying get allied with Turkey, the second largest military in NATO. Gulf countries are also losing confidence in the US.
It's not only Russia that's doing this, or is it?
No. Everyone is employing the bot-swarms. There appears to be a semi-autonomous bot net roaming about as well.
There's a guy on YouTube who is tracking it down. His name is Quinn Michaels.
No, it is only Russia that is using bots and automated posters. And these bots often make mistakes. Other government hires people to do it. Israel has the highest number of such people (between 5000 - 50000). Turkey has 6000 trolls that post pro AKP, that is, pro Erdogan posts on social media. (We know this thanks to newly classified emails from leaked databases).
The current ruling party of India has a massive troll army. My estimate is that it has about 10000 - 20000 professional trolls. A former troll who worked in that project wrote an entire book about it. The book is titled, I am a troll - Amazon.
And the funny thing is, the books review section was trolled by these trolls confirming the assertions made in the book. I added a screenshot to some of the troll reviews. (None of these trolls brought the book. You can see in the screenshot that none of the reviews with one star have the "Verified Purchase" sign.)