Elon Musk’s ironic bot army exposed

ooli@lemmy.world to Technology@lemmy.world – 280 points –
Elon Musk’s ironic bot army exposed
boingboing.net
39

this is the funnniest thing since he was forced to buy it. accidentally outing his own bots because billioonaire cant pay his bills.

What? This has nothing to do with his finances? Where did you get that from?

The bots got outed because they all gave the ChatGPT response to not answering a topic.

He's attempting to make money by increasing the value of twitter to advertisers by using bots.

The fact that the bots are poorly implemented is icing on the cake

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.

I am here to profess my eternal and undying love for this description

Xitter, the steaming remains of Twitter

Idk... I feel calling it steaming... When clearly is ash and smoke... and some bird bones, feels too good.

It's steaming because the X is pronounced "sh", so it's a steaming pile of Xit.

Ironic call out of ai bots when using AI generated trash images like that.

it's what elon deserves though. i don't want to see an actual picture of his ugly face.

Great to hear. Preferably from a more neutral source next time. Hard to take it at their word when it's so editorialized and filled w/ name-calling. And I say this as someone who probably would end up on a watch list if I gave my personal opinion of Elon

I agree , the source is doubtfull. And about Musk.. we should cut his head without ceremony and ditch it in a sewer... I think there is a lot of us on that watchlist

Impossible nowadays to get unbiased news. For instance, despite Reuters excellence in journalism awards, people still love sharing their Daily Mail and Mother Jones.

Just read the news from the Reuters app directly, problem solved

Is that entire site just ai generated garbage now?

well the artwork undeniably is.
but the point stands: obvious Xitter bot army is obvious.

He could stand in the middle of fifth avenune and shoot a guy in the face and the bots would never leave Xitter

2 more...

In fairness, this is not a new danger. Koch media affiliates have been doing this for decades.

It's still absolutely dangerous, just didn't need AI to be so.

Is the "X" in "Xitheads" pronounced like "xzitheads" or like "jhitheads"?

I usually pronounce 'x' as an 'sh' like the native Mexican language of Nahuatl.

Wouldn’t surprise me if the calls were coming from inside. What’s Twitter’s Grok chatbot used for these days?