Yet trying to keep bots from taking over the discourse could come at a tremendous cost. It’s also easy to envision a future of Matrix-like enforcers destroying the boundary between public and private, demanding every citizen accept full transparency in his every word and deed. Viewed through that lens, China’s “innovations” in forced transparency, identity, and publicity—like the national “Social Credit Score” that bans you from travel if you fall too low in the rankings—are just the beginning. The quest to eradicate bad bots can quickly mutate into a crackdown on free humans.

That’s because, in a free society, anonymous and pseudonymous communication is a foundational right. (Just ask the authors of the Federalist Papers.) Bots have us so scared because the easiest way to fight fake interlocutors is to attack that right. Technology has spawned a deep contradiction in our culture, turning the liberty value of “one person, one voice” against itself.