Free Speech for Bots and Trolls? Foreign Interference and Democratic Self-Defense

My goal in this paper is to discuss how democracies can legitimately defend themselves against foreign interference, and specifically from the strategy to influence the public debate through bots and trolls in social media, which is employed in particular by Russian propaganda (Morrison 2021, Prodan & Gombar 2025). Such interferences exploit the very principles of liberal democracy, such as free speech and pluralism (Wigell 2019), while aiming at advancing the interests of the enemies of democracy. Therefore, they pose a problem of democratic self-defense: they constitute a threat against democracy, but excluding them might be regarded as anti-democratic. Models of “militant democracy” accept that some positions could be excluded from the democratic debate in order to preserve democracy itself (Kirshner 2014, Rijpkema 2018, Schupmann 2024), but these measures need an adequate justification. I propose to use the concept of manipulation to identify the illegitimate foreign interference that can be excluded from the democratic debate. Manipulation is a broad concept that has relevance in many fields (Sunstein 2022, Noggle 2026). However, I will argue that manipulative political speech is characterized by two conditions: the manipulated is deceived, and the manipulator exploits that deceit in order to advance some interests. Specifically, I will observe that the fundamental interest of the manipulator is a necessity to defend a certain conviction a priori, regardless of truth and reason. I will apply this definition of manipulation to Russian propaganda, and specifically to the use of bots and trolls. Then I will analyze the relation between manipulation, foreign interference and democracy, to determine whether there are sufficient criteria for exclusion of manipulative foreign interference. I will argue that manipulation and foreign interference are not sufficient conditions separately, so non-manipulative foreign interference or domestic manipulation could not be excluded, but that there is sufficient ground to exclude manipulative foreign interference. Since Russian propaganda is both a foreign interference and a form of manipulation, measures to exclude it or limit its influence in the public debate of democracies are justified. Kirshner, A. (2014). A theory of militant democracy: The ethics of combating political extremism. Yale University Press Morrison, S. (2021). The rise of the Kremlin Troll. Journal of Media and Information Warfare (JMIW), 14(2), 1-14 Noggle, R., (2026) "The Ethics of Manipulation", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2026 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.), Rijpkema, B. (2018). Militant democracy: The limits of democratic tolerance. Routledge. Prodan, T., & Gombar, M. (2025). Disinformation as Strategy: Russian Electoral Interference in the EU and US. Communication Management Review, 10(02), 76-95. Schupmann, B. A. (2024). Democracy despite itself: Liberal constitutionalism and militant democracy. Oxford University Press. Sunstein, C. R. (2022). Manipulation as theft. Journal of European Public Policy, 29(12), 1959-1969. Wigell, M. (2019). Hybrid interference as a wedge strategy: a theory of external interference in liberal democracy. International affairs, 95(2), 255-275.