No he is not!
If someone doesn’t like my movie and voices his personal opinion on it, fine.
If someone doesn’t like my movie and creates a bot to post 1,000 negative reviews to deter others from ever seeing it, that is not.
I can mute the bot creator, sure, but now no one will see my movie, my speech is curtailed, not due to his negative opinion on it, but due to his actions to mislead others into thinking 1,000 independent people share his opinion when they don’t.
These bots are a scourge, and though opportunists absolutely will build them, if you don’t create an ethos to enact a reputational cost, I think we’ll soon find the public square here less usual than Twitter.