Let's debunk this right here: the headline of this article is disinformation.

There is no evidence in this article to attribute the fake signatories to @MrKRudd. It is false information spread with the intent to mislead readers.

Here's why (thread): https://twitter.com/TurnbullMalcolm/status/1328820528757362689

The article shows a genuine technical/security concern with the Petition website, but that's all we can say based on the evidence.

As cybersecurity expert (Robert Potter) says: "The system for managing petitions is the vulnerability, not necessarily the single petition."

So who runs the bots? A Bangladeshi freelancer, paid a pittance ($58) by a blogger (Nicholas Smith).

There is zero evidence to attribute this to Kevin Rudd or any other agent. In fact, the evidence is right there that it was orchestrated by Smith.

So who benefits? Among others:

- Smith makes more money out of the attention and social capital it generates.
- The Bangladeshi freelancer gets $58.
- The petition website is improved if mundane spam issues are addressed, benefitting citizens.

But more importantly, who loses?

Well, democracy, for a start.

Petitions are a democratic *right* - they are the only way an individual can directly place grievances before Parliament.

Undermining the Petitions website serves to erode trust in fundamental democratic institutions.

Yes, the Petitions website has flaws. But we can fix these spam filter problems, which are general, not very high-tech, and by no means new.

These issues have nothing to do with any particular petition or individual.

Therefore to invalidate the entire online petition system due to "Kevin Rudd's Bangladeshi bots" is not only a false statement that damages Rudd, but also an attack on democracy.

It intentionally misleads readers by taking a kernel of truth (generic spam filter issues) and weaponising its context to undermine Parliamentary action resulting from petitions.

It's a false narrative: "we can't trust petitions, they're overrun by partisan bots".

This greatly damages trust in democratic institutions and citizen rights - even if 99.8% of signatories are genuine people, we only remember the 0.02% 'bots' ($58 of Bangladeshi labour).

This false narrative won't go away easily either - that's how disinformation works.

To conclude, we worry about "foreign interference", but in this case the deception is orchestrated domestically and carried out via cheap overseas labour, and most importantly *superspread* by an article in mainstream media. The bots are not the issue here.

And finally, huge shout out and thanks to @edengillespie for drawing this article to my attention. I was glad to contribute much more detailed commentary about this in a forthcoming article - I look forward to reading it.