Pushing certain talking points, managing discourse, amplifying certain people/events/whatever. Not all of it is nation-state stuff, some things are just lobbying and influence-building and market manipulation. Spreading rumors for shady purposes is a very old scam.

more like it would be from the nation state level. for example, RU pushing these lil psyop bots to get Trump elected and/or grow the divide in between Ds and Rs.

We're talking about foreign influence here. All recent US and German elections reeked of Russian dark money, then there was the entire Cambridge Analytica mess and before that it was Brexit.