In early 2023, The Daily Beast published two articles alleging the use of various underhanded social media tactics by the DeSantis presidential campaign (“Ron DeSantis’ Secret Twitter Army of Far-Right Influencers” and “How Ron DeSantis Is Taking a Page Out of Nixon’s Playbook”). Peppered with phrases such as “bot farm” and “online army”, these articles by campaign reporter Jake Lahut contain bold claims about various social media activity, including an allegation that pro-DeSantis online operatives posted sexual imagery involving children. If true, this would likely be a serious crime, but this claim along with several others falls apart under scrutiny. Although social media manipulation is common in politics today and it would not be surprising if the DeSantis campaign were indeed engaged in shady behavior, these two articles fail to document anything of the sort, and most of the key claims would never have seen publication had The Daily Beast done a modicum of due diligence.as it turns out, these accounts do not in fact have a 24/7 pace of tweetingThe saga began with a January 25th, 2023 article with the title “Ron DeSantis’ Secret Twitter Army of Far-Right Influencers”. The term “bot farm” is repeatedly dropped over the course of forty meandering paragraphs, but actual evidence of a “bot farm” is virtually absent (regardless of whether the term “bot” is being correctly used to describe automated activity or more colloquially to describe any sort of inauthentic account). All but two of the social media accounts specifically mentioned are the…The "bot farm" that wasn't