https://www.reddit.com/domain/dailykos.com/

Trail pheromones often serve as a multi purpose chemical secretion that leads members of its own species towards a food source, while representing a territorial mark in the form of an allomone to organisms outside of their species. Specifically, trail pheromones are often incorporated with secretions of more than one exocrine gland to produce a higher degree of specificity. Considered one of the primary chemical signaling methods in which many social insects depend on, trail pheromone deposition can be considered one of the main facets to explain the success of social insect communication today.

Bots work the same way. They act like real users, following the trails, clicking through from reddit, browsing stories until they find a good target to shit out a comment. It can be pooping on Bernie, attacking Hillary, gaslighting Democrats or defending Russia. Or just posting white noise reputation chum for its robuddies to avoid dailykos' antiquated automoderation system.

So why doesn't dailykos really do something about it? Since 2004, they experience a massive uptick in traffic around every election season. After the election, traffic drops by 50% or more. If the bots help Markos Moulatas squeeze 8 figures out of that one year window before three years of drought, of course he isn't going to want to jeopardize that. Intentionally. Curiously, dailykos was one of the sites spoofed by the Methbot. The methbot was a sophisticated traffic spoofing operation run by Russian organized crime using a program thought to have been stolen(?) from the Russian intelligence services. The Methbot created a fake dailykos site and DNS, then had electronic ad agencies bid instantly on ad space for this fake site. It would be a neat way to pay for your giant bot/troll army if you had one of them. The more traffic your bots add, the more money you get through your ad fraud. And if you're the sight owner enjoying the rush of new, unique and valuable traffic, why not just sit back and enjoy the ride?

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/8/4/1556658/-The-amazing-rise-and-fall-and-rise-of-Daily-Kos

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/7/3/1311540/-Daily-Kos-setting-traffic-records-every-month

What could possibly go wrong? Well, those little gremlins had teeth and they set of a Bernie vs Hillary shitstorm that rolled right onto reddit (kossacks_for_sanders) and the election. A debacle that the site administration mishandled in a way that would make even the worst of reddit look divinely inspired. They got trolled into purging their own users. This was called the Ides of March or simply 3/15/16, and he's never really owned up to his massive fuck up nor instituted a moderation scheme that would tamp down on trolling. Don't let yourselves get fooled again, Dailykos ownership will chase the cash in 2018 and leave Democrats out to dry unless something changes.