A Case of Automated, Self-Generating Fractal Identities?

Last month, an anti-net neutrality group, American Commitment, employed questionable means to generate millions of "genuine" submissions in the second round of public comment to the FCC over net neutrality. It was discovered that form letters (basically, automated responses) were used to generate the vast majority -- estimated at 88 percent -- of all reply comments. These submissions overwhelmingly opposed Title II classification of the internet and any pro-net neutrality regulation. By contrast comments made during the first round of public comment lobbied to preserve net neutrality through new legislative protections.

While form letters were used to generate submissions in the first round of public comments, they amounted to a fraction of the total generated by American Commitment. So great was the number of responses (estimated between 1.6 and 2.5 million replies) in the second round that some social media commentors have speculated that they were bot- or auto-generated.

I am not one to point fingers in this case. In my opinion, there are too many unknown factors to determine definitively from this article whether the form letters were bogus or digital forgeries. However, I find it fascinating to speculate on how very within-the-realm-of-possibility it is to be able to produce numerous other, technically fake identities from a core set of identities (in this case, millions of form letters from thirty core ones). Fractal identities, for example, could be used for the purpose of swaying mass opinion or influencing social policy as long as there is a digital forum on which they can thrive. Fractal or multiple identities do not necessarily have to extend to such a massive scale, but this instance of form lettering (botting?) illustrates that it is certainly possible. In the digital realm, what is there to stop a person from having millions, if not billions of identities? What good, bad, or neutral deeds could be perpetrated from such an immanently powerful tactic?