A coordinated bot campaign targeting a UK government consultation on tobacco and vaping policy has been identified in research published in the journal Tobacco Control. The 2023 consultation on the tobacco and vapes bill, which proposed a ban on disposable vapes, received 118,756 total responses. Using bot-detection methods, the Department of Health and Social Care determined that 90,835 of those responses, representing 76% of the total, were machine-generated submissions.
The automated responses were concentrated on a single question in the “smoke free generation” consultation, with nearly all of them opposing the government’s proposed disposable vapes ban. According to the DHSC, the submissions were frequently duplicated and sent at high frequency from a limited number of IP addresses. Researchers Dr Nason Maani from the University of Edinburgh and Prof Anna Gilmore from the University of Bath characterized the campaign as appearing to be the first documented instance of large-scale automated interference in a formal public health policy consultation in the UK.
The DHSC excluded the 90,835 automated responses from its decision-making process regarding the consultation. The Labour government, which took office in 2024, subsequently inherited the tobacco and vapes bill and passed it into law, including the ban on businesses selling or supplying disposable vapes. Health policy advocates and experts expressed concern about the implications of the bot campaign, noting the potential for such tactics to undermine public trust in government consultation processes and obscure genuine public opinion on health matters. Officials stated that robust controls prevented the manipulation from affecting the policy outcome and committed to remaining vigilant against similar interference in future consultations.
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