Does it actually matter if it is a bot rather than a person with malicious intent?
Of course it matters. A bot can scale to appear as millions of people. So whoever wields the most compelling bots gets a massive force-multiplier for their opinions and objectives. Or more likely, grants that power to the highest bidder.
Meanwhile, labor in Asia is quite cheap ...
Also, they might use bots for the "easy" people, and real human workers for more alert people.
The bots might be a blessing, in some ways, if they result in more people looking for good explanations rather than for assertions or herd direction; assessing ideas rather than their sources.
This quantitative change breeds qualitative change. Any time computers are used against us, be it in information warfare or physical, the reduced cost and decreased risk mean the activation energy is lower and the scale so much greater. The barrier to entry becomes lower, too.
Normally, without the puppet/bot amplification, the latter guy could be easily ignored. Now his bots can drown out real voices, and that's a problem.
See: the thousands of letters to the FCC regarding net neutrality that were sent by "bots" impersonating real people. Letters written by actual voters were dwarfed by the fake letters.