[bramhaag]

My feed has devolved into AI generated propaganda with a scary amount of genuine support. Police brutality against minorities and other politically relevant groups; all fake but with hundreds of seemingly real replies cheering them on.

[ge96]

Maybe the replies are also fake to drive the narrative

It is interesting where you go on (eg. echo chambers) but like 9gag for example is super racist and doesn't seem to be moderated.

Like TruthSocial do real people actually use that? Crazy

[efilife]

They are not fake. I've also seen these and checked commenters' profiles. Real people, in the 35-50 age range.

[ryandrake]

How can you tell by just looking at their profile? Bots have for over a decade been able to generate a profile with a real looking picture (usually just scraped from the web) and a realistic sounding bio.

[trueno]

yea im surprised i see so many times that people on _hackernews_ are convinced profile activity is real.

theres entire marketing companies that provide what is effectively a botnet of social media activity to generate buzz, promising packages with "social media engagement". disney uses these to try and hype movie trailers, when the recent tron trailer came out it took 1 minute for a bunch of comments that looked like seemingly real enough accounts to be in there posting "im not ready for this" "omg" etc. and yes, these networks of fake accounts on all social media platforms do have non-vacant profiles meaning theyve got comments and stuff all over each others pages. there was a recent smaller production that is suing their marketing agency which promised this deceptive engagement and their implementation shit the bed and all the bots just interacted amongst themselves on the movies instagram page. the movie completely tanked at the box office because they never got their fake accounts to start engaging outside of the movies instagram account.

everyone focuses on the actual content itself as the subject of AI platform abuse, but are we really so naive to think that the companies pouring millions of dollars into these efforts are too stupid to understand that controlling the narrative involves requires simulating human feedback?

its in our nature to want to "go to the comments" to "get the real tea" and. im just going to say right now that yeah, the entities deploying these types of accounts are well aware that that is how many of us look for perspective. they're not stupid, and it's easier than it's ever been to game commentary in 2026.

[ge96]

Tangent but reddit allows people to hide their post/comment history which is fine I guess but it's not great for that reason, trying to see if an account is a bot or not. Other than age can't tell anything about that account.

I notice more and more accounts use it, particularly the spicy commenters. Which is whatever, I try to stay away from social media now, this is SM here but at least it's more technically oriented/useful.

[Anamon]

Profile age and history are not a reliable indicator, either. Many of these bots use hacked accounts. The accounts of real people who stopped using the site and therefore won't notice the abuse of their account and stop it. You sometimes see this happen with your own friends since FB will suggest posts to you that your "friend" interacted with.

[bramhaag]

People can curate their profiles, but not search results. Their posts and comments will still show up if you just search on their user page.

[ge96]

I wonder if these are the people that cause a ruckus at protests ha

[jalapenos]

I just searched "TruthSocial".

First result is Trump's page, which I could access without a login.

There is the same ad "Featured Ad. Must See Video. This Video Will Soon Be Banned. Watch Before It's Deleted" repeated about a dozen times on the page, showing a woman wearing booty shorts approaching a private jet.

Looks very highbrow

[ddtaylor]

It's mostly all ICE engagement bait on both sides. In the same way we are all guilty of upvoting an article without reading it, they will amplify their ideas or viewpoints by signal boosting a video. The same way an echo chamber forms around a questionable news site that is often proven wrong or lying. The source doesn't matter anymore only the numbers.