In August of 2018, flight price comparison website, CheapAir, received an email threatening to spam online review websites and social media platforms with thousands of negative reviews unless CheapAir paid approximately $10,500 worth of Bitcoin, according to an August 28, 2018 article by Joseph Cox of Vice. The sender provided CheapAir with screenshots of disparaging posts about the website that appeared to have been made by botnets rather than human users.

A botnet is a group of computing devices simultaneously controlled by a third party, who can utilize it to share posts thousands of times in a matter of seconds, according to a Feb. 13, 2013, article by Steve Gold of The Guardian. In the weeks leading up to the 2016 United States presidential election and the 2017 Catalonian Independence Referendum, suspected bot accounts shared inflammatory content thousands of times, including posts that seemingly disparaged parties or candidates, according to a Nov. 20, 2018, article by Maria Temming of Science News.