Anyone with a brain knew that online ad metrics had been borked by bots for 15 years now. This isn’t new, it’s just the industry is still playing pretend, and as long as you have enough industry leaders playing pretend and not saying the quiet part out loud, nothing will get done.
Also, it’s a dead-end politically, because both parties love being able to sockpuppet online. Correct the Record and Cambridge Analytica are both examples of this kind of behavior from each party. They won’t make legal rules around sockpuppeting because it benefits them. They won’t go out of their way to make sockpuppets have to say they’re a paid advertisement like news and radio ads do. Because they much prefer it that it “seems like people are saying this” because they send in so many bots with their talking points. They’d prefer to flood the zone will bullshit than let citizens come to their own conclusions about anything.
So, don’t expect this problem to get better anytime soon. It’s too beneficial of a tool to the political and business classes. They won’t make any rules to stop it or make advertisers admit how many of their “views/clicks” are bots.