It was late last year, and I was witnessing a new form of religious persecution. In front of me, millions of tweets had been turned into metrics: lines, graphs, dots and splashes of colour. They showed a big group of Twitter accounts, who had all joined the platform together in August 2015. Obsessed with sport at first, their early online lives were dedicated to sharing fitness tips, mixed in with the odd piece of news or current affairs. Then during Britain’s EU referendum in 2016, the group became more political. “UK is free!” one said. “We want our country back!” said another. They were largely ignored.