I agree: they are not bothered by it.

It's not so much that there is a personal, or even a directed, interest in this website, or those blogs that I mentioned. It is simply that bot-technology has gotten very advanced in the past five or so years, and to think that the governments in the West are not employing them en masse (as we know China does), across the board, regardless of size, is a little silly * (not to say that you are silly, simply that they exist). They do not need much management if there is big money involved in it, most of the cost comes from setting it up in the first place. People can script bots to go to websites and mine information from them, or just mine pictures or even quoted texts. Tech companies already have their own bots which they do not need to manage, which go out and build profiles on their clientele for them, so they do not have to. If you do not know about this, please consider looking into it. Many programmers are being hired right now to create these types of bots. I am close with a foolish guy who programmed one for TedTalks.

That is occurring here, there, everywhere. It does not need to be directed when it concerns bots, they are like ants that you scatter to the wind, knowing that most will not find any bread crumbs, and that most will not bring home any solid dirt to work with. In fact, most websites can deal with bots if they are careful, just like most households can deal with ants. As it stands, I cannot be certain that bots have gotten so advanced that they could easily enter into comment boards and not be noticed. Besides, they are noticed here.

Personally, I think this site has already been attacked, not by government agencies, but by low-tier, low-brow, forsaken programmers who have taken contracts from "private individuals" who are probably tied to those entities, but acting independently from them. I don't think saidit is unique or special in this regard. I have seen small blogs get torn apart by bot attacks which gave way to shill drama, which in turn brought upon issues with their server, ending with the website closing down for unspecified reasons.

If your website consistently gets linked to places like Reddit, Twitter, Youtube, and so on, then it should be made clear that the level of interest your government has on you has increased, although that doesn't mean much considering all the websites that currently exist. As I said, I agree with you concerning them not being bothered by Saidit. I also highly doubt that there is a paid shill in our midst, unless they are here for shits and giggles because they are so used their shilling lifestyle. I don't even think they will ever be bothered by it, seeing as it is slipping down a slope right now. It's just that these types of bots can and will follow links. Perhaps they are programmed to only frequent popular sites. Actually, now that I consider it, that seems likely. So, I cannot say much more but that I agree with your statement.

But, I must ask. Where do these bots come from, in your personal view? Independent tech companies? Disgruntled naz-bols, like Magnora seems to suggest, or the CCP as the other admin suggests?