According to the observations of Mykhailo Zborovskyi Cosmobet (formerly owner), an expert in iGaming product development, a phenomenon known as the “water army” is a coordinated network of real, semi-fake and completely fake accounts that, in his opinion, can significantly affect a brand’s reputation in a relatively short time. He cites examples and data from various sources to support this thesis, although, like any assessment of the scale of such phenomena, it is based on available statistics and individual documented cases, and not on an exhaustive accounting of all cases.

What is a “water army”

Mykhailo Zborovskyi describes a “water army” as a network of accounts that act in a coordinated manner with the aim of spreading certain narratives, shaping public opinion or influencing the reputation of brands.

According to him, this phenomenon originated in China and, according to available data, has already spread to other markets, although the exact global scale of such activity is difficult to estimate with high accuracy due to its nature.

It is important, in his opinion, to distinguish between individual bot comments and an organized industry with a hierarchy, distribution of roles and funding. It is the second, more systematic format, according to his argument, that poses the main risk to business.

How, according to Mykhailo Zborovskyi, the mechanism can work

According to him, a typical scenario includes praising the desired brand, negative attacks on competitors and artificially raising certain topics to trends. He suggests that this creates the illusion of organic user activity, although distinguishing it from real public opinion, according to him, is often difficult even for specialists.

The expert also refers to public reports of large platforms. For example, Meta regularly reports the removal of accounts involved in coordinated information operations, although, according to Mykhailo Zborovskyi, such networks often reappear under different names within a relatively short time.

Why B2C businesses may be more vulnerable

According to the expert, in the B2C segment, consumer decisions are often formed quickly and largely based on emotions and trust in reviews. He refers to survey data, according to which about 98% of consumers at least sometimes read reviews before making a purchase, and if this figure reflects the real behavior of a wide range of users, it may explain the increased sensitivity of such brands to waves of negative comments.

Mykhailo Zborovskyi also draws attention to research on social learning models, which indicate that newer reviews can disproportionately influence a buyer's decision when the feed is sorted by date. It is difficult to assess how universally this effect manifests itself in different categories of goods and services, based on available sources.

Scale and profitability

Mykhailo Zborovskyi refers to the World Economic Forum estimate, according to which the impact of fake reviews on world trade could be about $152 billion per year. Like any macroeconomic estimate of shadow activity, this figure is most likely a calculation model, not the result of direct accounting, so it should be treated as an approximate order of magnitude.

He also gives an example from China in early 2025, when, according to local cyber police, 15 members of a group were detained that allegedly combined fake attacks on the reputation of businesses with subsequent blackmail for the “removal” of negativity.

According to available information, the case was investigated by law enforcement agencies, and the details of the criminal proceedings are based on their official reports.

A different perspective

The expert’s arguments are based on real sources, but it is worth recognizing several limitations of such an analysis.

- First, data on the scale of “water armies” mostly come from the affected companies themselves, platforms, or researchers of individual cases; systematic independent statistics that would cover all markets simultaneously are most likely not available in the public domain;
- Second, in some cases it is difficult to distinguish with certainty a coordinated campaign from a real, albeit sharp, surge in consumer dissatisfaction;
- Third, the effectiveness of countermeasures such as lawsuits or public warnings, which the expert mentions, has not yet been supported, as far as can be judged from the available materials, by long-term independent studies of their impact on the scale of the problem as a whole.

At the same time, the exact scale of this phenomenon, the causal relationships in specific cases, and the long-term effectiveness of existing countermeasures remain issues that, judging by the available data, are difficult to assess with complete certainty, and Mykhailo Zborovskyi himself seems to acknowledge this, speaking of the impossibility of "completely shutting down" such networks, but only of increasing the cost of entry for those who use them.