"In reality, many of the people targeted by the Block Bot were political critics and sceptics who disagreed with its creators’ hardline progressive beliefs."<p>I'm really not surprised by this. The norm now is to silence and destroy your opposition by calling them bigots, racists, and bullies.<p>I've seen this in many of the open source project discussions (I subscribe to a few mailing lists). A contributor won't want any critics and will call anyone that disagrees a "bully".