In other times (like 12 years ago on ebay seller central), posters would create 'sock puppet' accounts so they could unleash their inner critic/cheerleader. I remember times the sock puppets would argue with each other just to disrupt the thread. except for one usenet troll, they revealed themselves rather quickly. The usenet troll had the ability to give each sock puppet a unique "voice". Nowadays the bots have no "voice" and are readily exported..