List of bots appeared on the Internet: no word from Serbia’s progressives

A certain Marko Jovanovic from Twitter is only interested in politics. Similar to another of his namesakes, he wholeheartedly supports the government and President Aleksandar Vucic and despises the opposition.

Another common interest they share is that they are both alter egos of the SNS member and former MP Janko Langura.

That name appears on a list of over 14,000 bot accounts from all over Serbia, among which citizens recognized their neighbours - school teachers, municipal workers, heads of city services, etc.

"There are different categories of these people. The so-called haters who spoke against the opposition, even against Serbia, in order to provoke others on social networks. Those who share various orders of the SNS. You also have the highest coordinators of all that, who were even under their own names," media and communications expert Igor Avzner told N1.

And since it turned out that people employed in the public sector were operating some of the accounts, the question arises whether they - hate, provoke, support the government or coordinate all this, during working hours and whether this is included in the salary they receive.

"The short answer is - Yes!", said cyber security expert Ivan Markovic who published an analysis which, he says, shows high bot activity during working hours between 8 am and 5 pm.

After the details of the people behind the bot accounts were published on social networks, some of them admitted to participating in this and apologized, while others quickly deleted their accounts.