...and this is why it is so vulnerable to foreign influence. An army of bots (human or programmed) can sway Twitter incredibly easily and drive outrage, which now seems will shape the US media narrative.
It's like they are intentionally steering the ship towards the rocks. I wonder who might be helping this effort... hmm... /s
Well, an army of bots is not free. So you have a new medium which allows power in the real world to become manifested in the digital world.
Illiberal forces have been using capital to mess with the institutions of open and free discourse since before the printing press, Twitter is just yet another new market where power and money matter.
There are no armies of Twitter bots swaying mass public opinion. That's another nonsensical conspiracy theory of the sort of the New York Times has gone all-in on to try and explain how Trump won without having to engage with his policies or arguments.
This article looks at just one news story+research paper alleging a Russian Twitter bot army swaying politics, but in the UK rather than the USA:
It's like they are intentionally steering the ship towards the rocks. I wonder who might be helping this effort... hmm... /s