In November 2018, fingers were pointed at Melnyk after a collection of newly created and suspicious Twitter accounts began appearing, all of which praised Melnyk's performance while attacking his detractors. The Twitter accounts largely targeted certain writers who covered the Senators for local newspapers the "Ottawa Citizen" and "Ottawa Sun", making similar claims that these writers had treated Melnyk unfairly. Speculation immediately arose that these were bot accounts and not real human beings. A subsequent investigation conducted by the "Ottawa Citizen" revealed that, although the bots could not be conclusively traced back to Melnyk, they were "created to launch a co-ordinated disinformation campaign and to attack media coverage of the Sens while lauding the team and its owner Eugene Melnyk".