Twitter bots helped build the cult of Elon Musk and Tesla. But who's creating them?

Twitter bots have been created on behalf of other companies, the researchers found, but the content tends to be what they called 'generic' marketing messages. — Photo by Souvik Banerjee on Unsplash

In early November 2013, the news wasn't looking great for Tesla. A series of reports had documented instances of Tesla Model S sedans catching on fire, causing the electric carmaker's share price to tumble.

Then, on the evening of Nov 7, within a span of 75 minutes, eight automated Twitter accounts came to life and began publishing positive sentiments about Tesla. Over the next seven years, they would post more than 30,000 such tweets.