This has got me wondering. I dont share the values of the likes of the lady from the Mandalorian, but something about her words this week on botfarms and astroturf has me thinking.

Those of us who used to have twitter accounts started to notice a lot of people we didnt follow pop up in our timelines, didnt we. Telling us to watch things we didnt want to watch, and then kind of badmouthing those of us who suggested it was shit TV or a shit movie… same appears to happen for music, with lots of accounts spamming about boybands from Korea or the latest “summer banga!” These accounts always have way more followers than any official accounts (She Hulk was mentioned).

Then this got me thinking. Twitter claimed they didnt make a huge amount of money from advertising. But clearly they had money coming in, but from where. This is all paranoia on my part perhaps, but could they have been selling fake audience engagement? Twitter still claims this, and many of their advertising clients have gone, still to be enticed back.

So the question is this: is this happening on other main sites where engagement is important to sales, politics etc? Youtube is somewhere I have noticed lots of what some call “simp comments”. Overly sycophantic dialogue that never questions the rather questionable on large Youtuber’s videos. FTX Cryptobros, and sellers of success… Facebook was caught out with similar measures (Cambridge-Analytica) during the Brexit referendum here.

It feels like the old adage - “the internet is all fake” might ring a little true. What are your thoughts?