They didn't need LLMs to build bots.

Ashley Madison for example was 10 bots for every one real woman or something absurd.

If you need something more sophisticated than basic template based bots (which always worked just fine, your marks are uh, not exactly the most observant people and really really really want to believe the pretty girl likes them), then it is probably still cheaper to run a literal slave operation in some South Asian state than pay per token.