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Elon Musk’s ironic bot army exposed
(boingboing.net)
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this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2024
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The article isn't saying that Musk is behind the bots.
The article is making fun of him for waving his opportunity to do due diligence before the purchase and being stuck with all the bots.
Of course that’s what the article is saying.
“Bluesky users are roasting Elon Musk for his freshly exposed blue-checked bot army of fake Xitheads.”
“Fast forward a year and it appears Xitter, the steaming remains of Twitter, is using bots to generate Tweets and look bigger.”
Is the author actually accusing the company itself of running the bots in that sentence? The more I read it the more it hurts my brain. The more times I read this article my brain just hurts more and more. They're not even attempting to explain, let alone justify, this assertion.
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."
Is their justification for that accusation simply that the bots exist?
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.
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.
Adding to that, the idea of the check mark used to be to ensure you were talking to who you thought it was. Now bots are verified.