No doubt they are available for sale to some company or individual that wants to buy them wholesale and start spamming or astroturfing.
Who created them and why?
People wanting to sell them for $$ mostly. In some cases, people biding their time to use them for mass spam, social misdirection, opinion forming, etc.
I don’t understand the purpose of bots.
In social media, a common and concerning use of them is to use them wholesale (comments, posts, and votes) to try and sway mass opinion on some issue to something the person responsible for the bots wants.
Many of them are doing nothing so far.
No doubt they are available for sale to some company or individual that wants to buy them wholesale and start spamming or astroturfing.
People wanting to sell them for $$ mostly. In some cases, people biding their time to use them for mass spam, social misdirection, opinion forming, etc.
In social media, a common and concerning use of them is to use them wholesale (comments, posts, and votes) to try and sway mass opinion on some issue to something the person responsible for the bots wants.