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Elon Musk’s ironic bot army exposed (boingboing.net)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

It wouldn't be the 1st platform to try and use bots to boost numbers, except it is usually in the beginning when trying to reach that critical tipping point mass that brings people organically. This would be to make the ship look less underwater to save face (and possibly stop the whole platform imploding).

Edit - Also it very much says they believe Musk is running the bots in this sentence - "Fast forward a year and it appears Xitter, the steaming remains of Twitter, is using bots to generate Tweets and look bigger."

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Is their justification for that accusation simply that the bots exist?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

Yes. Musk claimed that Twitter was full of bots, but bought Twitter anyways. He now has access to everything, and yet the bot still exist. So he either has done a 180 on the bots being bad because they are helping the platform look bigger, or he actually did squash the previous bots and has deployed bots he finds more favorable to his platform/himself. Either way it looks that he is not actively fighting the bots after having stated the platform was full of them.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

This is really an important difference. Defrauding advertisers on purpose with clear intent is very different from doing do because one decided not to look. Not in effect but in how cheated the mypillow guy will feel.