Ask HN: Why are there such huge numbers of fake accounts "liking" on Twitter now

9 points·candiodari··5 comments

These days on twitter a lot of comments get insta-liked by accounts that invariably turn out to be "link in my profile, contact me for love" accounts?

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Here's a theory:

I suspect they're building up "influence" one like at a time, so they can pull on threads that are useful at some point in the future. It's fake attention directed at you.

I.E. You happen to say something that aligns well with their client's narrative... you get a like, which encourages you to say more things like that.

This is almost the exact inverse of the way Fox/CNN push narratives disguised as "news" by cherry picking facts and fudging a bit.

Can't be bots. Elon bought Twitter to get rid of bots. Between $8 blue checks and other measures, I think bots are mostly eliminated.

8$ per account is pretty expensive to run a bot. Though maybe still a good trade if you can hit the volume threshold with clients. If you can get 30 paid likes per account at 25c a piece that seems reasonable. $250 per 1000 likes seems decent. Though you probably need to pad that with 30-40k non blue likes to not trip up bot detection

It's an everything app now and "love" is a subset of "everything".

Maybe they want people to look at their profile. It worked with you.

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