How Elon Made the Bot Problem Worse
Hats off to this guy. Gothic Therapy has done some truly world-class citizen journalism here.
After Elon made his tender off for Twitter, he tried to back out of it, (not in any serious way, it was a negotiating tactic), stating that the value was false due to the number of bots.
X.Com has always had a problem with bots since it costs nothing to set up an account. If you were a corporation and someone who was trying to interfere with your bottom line needed to be destroyed, sic the bot farm on him. It wasn’t free but it was effective. NGOs loved bot farms for their ability to create instant public support for whatever they were doing or at least make it seem like there was public support for it. Ruining a problematic individual couldn’t be easier.
But then Elon came in and started wiping out the more obvious bots. He also kicked open the door to that must have blue check mark. Nobody quite knew how they were awarded before then. If you were a celebrity, a journalist, or a left-wing activist (but I repeat myself) it seemed pretty easy. Everybody else who wanted one was chasing phantoms and rumors. Some poor fools paid thousands to try and get that blue check and the only they got for it was a lighter bank account.
From that perspective, the outrage was understandable. You went through hell to get those cerulean pixels, and now any shmuck can have one with a driver’s license and $8 bucks. There followed a hilarious real-life round of Star Bellied Sneetches. Although, I’ve noticed that just about all of the people that publically refused to pay for their checks, have checks again.
It looked like Musk had beaten the bot problem but then it came back and was much worse than before..
Here’s why.
Musk also started paying verified accounts for their engagement. Which meant that bot networks were now worth more than they ever had been. Certainly, the engagement farming payout was way more than the $8 a month Elon demanded for verification. So go ahead and get verified, it’s money in the bank.
However, let us not forget the original purpose of the bot farms. Sure the engagement farming made a mint but there were still companies that were quite willing to pay through the nose for the bought and paid-for opinions of the bots.
I don’t think there is a company more aggressive about the use of bot armies than Disney. It first became blatantly obvious during the board of directors fight. People on Twitter just don’t care enough about proxy fights to have opinions about one side or the other, let alone get them trending.
