this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2023
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A lot of it seems to be repost bots these days, and it's impossible to know whether the upvotes they get are real or coming from other bots.
I'm largely ignorant to the mechanics of the attention economy in mass social media spaces, but what's the point of having bots post on social media platforms, only to be mass upvoted and interacted with by other bots? Like who benefits from that and how? Why is that a thing?
Karma farming, where you boost up the reputation of an account so you can sell it. Propagandists and marketers will pay more for an account that looks like a real user in good standing. So you keep the account busy and raise its karma by whatever means, including repeating formerly popular posts and using bots to boost them.
Whom do they sell the account to? How does the purchaser benefit from the account? I'm sure these are probably basic questions. I'm just curious
Dodgy organizations who want to pose as regular people and spread propaganda/disinformation/guerrilla advertising. Here's one forum I found which has reddit accounts for sale. There would be more on the "dark web" I imagine:
https://www.blackhatworld.com/forums/social-media.200/
Wow. I've heard about this kind of thing before but haven't actually dug to go and find it
My guess is bots circle jerk other bots and those accounts will (at least appear to) have large audiences, which may be valuable to advertisers or the like.