[michaelt]

Well, it's pretty widely known that a lot of dating websites are full of third-party bots, trying to get you to follow certain instagram/premium snapchat/onlyfans profiles - and pushing romance scams, financial scams and suchlike.

It's also pretty widely known that a lot of the big dating websites started out with a bunch of first-party fake profiles and activity, because nobody joins a dating website that doesn't have any users. Usually once the site becomes successful though they get rid of the first-party fake activity though.

So first-party bots and bots that are active right now on the major sites are both plausible. Just maybe not first-party bots that are active on the major sites right now.