trending topics to get users to endaj in a disinformation attack. it helps real people see that stuff and engage in it, right? exactly, yeah. it s more subtle. it spreads better. reporter: nick found russians were buying armies of bots that were difficult to trace. essentially can you go to a website that s publicly available and buy 1,000 bots for maybe just a couple of dollars. yeah. reporter: for $25 i m buying 10,000 retweets. the whole goal is to seed and refertilize the conversation. one thing russians did is use bots to get momentum. once real people start following you or me, the bots step away. reporter: in two hours the bots we purchased retweeted 10,000. there s an arms race going on between twitter and bot builders. reporter: twitter says it catches 450,000 suspicious accounts every day. and will continue to strengthen against attempted manipulation. is this legal to be able to buy all of these bots and influence people?
decades. that s right. i have a fascinating conversation. i could go for 15 or 20 minutes i ve been accused of having no forebearers, if that that s not true. pete williams, injoy the weekend. larry, always good to have you. thank you. thank you. hijacking the message. how hard is it to actually influence an election through twitter? the simple and very cheap form la that seems to do the trick. also not alone. strong words from actress rose mcgowan who galvanized a growing number of women who speak out against sexual harassment and assault. i have been slut-shamed, i have been harassed, i have been maligned. and you know what. i m just like you.
reason donald trump won. i think sort of separating that from this conversation would be really valuable and helpful. let me ask you here about this breaking news. i should preface this with, i don t have all the information but going on what jo kent said there, i know how you feel about the first amendment of this idea that a social network would now start labeling precisely where this information comes from, whether it s a political ad. how does is that sprtrike you if they to want do it, that s great. i have no problem with people wanting to create transparency. i m more skeptical of them saying we won t run sputnik in lift our investigation. that s completely, don t yell at us in public kind of mood. are they not going to run the twitter accounts from iranian state television that broadcasts in america, too? of course not. they re doing that because we re living right now, and the story is in the context of, there s two twin panics. one social media panic going on