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This 'College Protester' Isn't Real. It's an AI-Powered Undercover Bot for Cops

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235 points colinprince | 1 comments | 17 Apr 25 13:57 UTC | HN request time: 0.222s | source
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constantcrying ◴[17 Apr 25 14:18 UTC] No.43717225[source]▶
Interesting that the fake personas are active on both reddit and 4chan, which usually are anonymous or at least pseudonymous.

The "bots are filling subreddits/image boards" has been a common conspiracy theory, usually called "dead Internet theory". Apparently it is at least partially true.

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1. Deukhoofd ◴[17 Apr 25 15:34 UTC] No.43718378[source]▶
I mean, of course it is. Marketing companies have long since realized that they can have far more effective advertising by acting like humans, and that people will take a recommendation from another person more serious than a random ad. Propagandists have had the same realization.

If you consider how fast you can generate huge amount of random comments, it's basically a no-brainer that huge amounts of online comments are online generated.

The only real throttle is the social media platform itself, and how well it protects against fake accounts. I don't know how motivated Reddit really is at stopping them (engagement is engagement), and a quick check on Github shows that there are a bunch of readily available solvers for 4chans captchas.