[asdfasdf32r3]

I suspect people are downvoting because it's easier than getting into a discussion with someone whose tone doesn't convey a willingness to have a constructive conversation.

Your blithe comment has some merit on its surface -- I also "think" it seems trivial to do account fraud at a large scale -- but it pattern matches against the "I can build Stack Overflow in a weekend" mode. I can only guess, but I imagine the difficulty factor going from 500 to 1 million bots is much greater than 200x higher. (As in, if there are 1,000,000 people right now on Earth who could do the former, I suspect there are way fewer than 1mm/500 for the latter.)

There are undoubtedly bot networks that operate (although we have no idea for how long), at a scale that would likely surprise me. However, even that doesn't make the data useless (especially when frequently cited against a previous measurement).

Finally, your non-sequitur about markets being controlled by HFT bots hit a number of negative heuristics in my brain.