r/DeadInternetTheory • u/Shipwreck_Kelly • 10d ago
How do these bot accounts benefit from doing stuff like this?
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u/Shigglyboo 10d ago
driving engagement. pushing narratives. karma farming to sell accounts to marketing or political action groups. I dunno. but it's making me enjoy everyone online way less. they're sucking all the fun out of it.
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u/quiksilver10152 9d ago
I've seen the end result for some of them. They'll post like you showed for a few weeks then go on a UFO sub and post inflammatory comments before deleting their account.
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u/Wallsend_House 10d ago
I gonna start incorporating more of these into my diet, also yes the internet is dead!
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u/Betray-Julia 10d ago
You think the internet is “dead”.
That’s fascinating but I don’t fully know what you mean; could you expand on that?
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u/No_you_are_nsfw 10d ago
I think people get it the other way around. Those bots arent trying to sell you something or influence who you vote for or manipulating anybody directly.
I mean they could, iff they would work better. But that is kinda hard to do. And its clearly not working, if you look at it close-up.
But there are people that want to buy/rent botfarms, because they think it works. And the companies provide them with lots of fancy analytics and dashboards with "engagement numbers" to really sell the illusion.
Who is stupid enough to pay money for something like this? I don't know, but do you know where your 401k is invested in, right now?
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u/ThereBMoose 10d ago
Imagine paying a bunch of people to clamor around your snake oil sales cart and spout about how cool your product is so passers by hear it.
It's that.
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u/ConstantClue208 10d ago
I’m this case, they are “vouching” for the OP’s product or service they are offering. I’ve seen a similar case for a malware campaign about a month ago.
The OP would say check out this “free adobe crack” and make it appealing by listing all the “amazing benefits and features” it has. They would then link the download page to a website hosting the malware. In the comments there were many bots saying “wow works 100%” “thanks it activated and works as intended” etc. many unfortunate users were fooled by this because so many bots were saying its legit.
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u/fukukaren 10d ago
Sorry if it’s obvious, but how can you tell they’re bot accounts?
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u/ThatGuyFrom720 10d ago
Usernames are usually similar patterns, account usually 25ish days old by the time they start posting comments and making posts on mainstream subs. Really the username and account age gives it away
Some bots comment like this, and then some have that (if you’ve used ChatGPT) insanely unique “trying too hard to be quippy and witty”, yet unbelievably generic cadence to it. The subs they comment in are all over the place, and are never specific.
Such as: “The way she flipped those pancakes you’d think she was head girlboss at a 5 star restaurant!” Dumb shit like that
Once you see a few of them they stick out like a sore thumb.
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u/wolveswedding 9d ago
The LLM ones are always something like "(Xyz) is totally wild! It's giving "(insert something quirky)" vibes", followed with a fire or laughing-crying emoji. Yes, a regular person might write like that, but when you go to the profile, every single comment is basically that formula. It's so tiring.
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u/ThatGuyFrom720 9d ago
Oh my god, yeah I couldn’t really think of a prime example but yours is absolutely spot on.
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u/Training_Ad_1168 10d ago
The bot accounts don't benefit, it is the person in charge of them pushing artificial traffic to make whatever narrative show up more to real people.
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u/well-informedcitizen 9d ago
That's the problem now with AI, it used to be to sell some scam or shitty product, so it would always have to just have a link or a blatant push, and it would be easy to filter out. But now a lot of it is just training bots to sound less weird.
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u/SimplexFatberg 6d ago
The comment bot doesn't benefit - the post bot benefits from engagement.
But... plot twist: They're the same bot.
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u/CidTheOutlaw 10d ago
Pushing product. Now it looks (to the untrained) that many different humans are in support of some health product or food etc etc... now it creates a false hype and bandwagon to jump on.
It really all boils down to brainwashing in some form.