The story behind the cartoon
When the UK government asked the public whether it should ban disposable vapes, most of the answers came from machines. Of the 118,756 responses to its 2023 tobacco and vapes consultation, 90,835 — 76% — were sent by bots, according to a study published in the journal Tobacco Control by Nason Maani of the University of Edinburgh and Anna Gilmore of the University of Bath.
The Department of Health and Social Care caught the campaign and threw the responses out: they did not follow the path real people took through the online form, were 'often duplicated many times and sent at high frequency from a small number of IP addresses,' and all but two answered the same question — opposing the disposable vape ban. The researchers call it what 'appears to be the first documented instance of large-scale automated interference in a formal public health policy consultation.'
With the bots removed, 27,921 genuine responses remained, and the picture flipped: 79.6% of valid respondents wanted restrictions on disposable vapes, and 69% agreed they should be banned from sale outright. The ban went ahead — single-use vapes have been banned from sale in the UK since June 1, 2025 — and nobody has been named as being behind the bot campaign.
The joke is the scale of the impersonation: one machine, stamping out NO after NO, impersonating an entire electorate while the one real person in the room can't even get his YES into the slot. Democracy, outvoted by its own photocopier.
THE BOUNCER
THE WORST DISGUISE IN THE WORLD.
THE GREEN CHECKMARK.
THE PROOF CAME WITH BUGS.