It’s official. I am the Don Juan of Twitter/X.
Last fall, the fortunes of X / Twitter seemed at its depth. Elon Musk had removed hate speech and disinformation filters, re-posted a couple of nasty ones himself, and then, in a display of lack of impulse control that would have made any pre-pubescent teenage boy envious, eventually told advertisers to F- off when they dared threaten to not advertise on his conspiracy spewing site. That’s when I began to notice something unusual.
My X/Twitter, or whatever it’s being called these days account, was suddenly gaining traction and attracting new followers after months of near dormancy.
When so many were abandoning the platform in disgust of the disinformation and toxic hellscape Twitter/x had become, I was gaining followers.
Was I suddenly witty, sexy, and cool? Had I had a burst of national news exposure? Had I done something stupid or crazy enough to go viral? Was I getting better looking with age? Nope.
You see, these new followers all had something in common. They followed thousands of people, had almost no followers of their own, and were usually brand-new accounts. That’s the “bot” part.
Oh, they were also beautiful, sometimes scantily clad “females,” and they LOVED what I said. Perhaps I am getting more handsome and wittier with age? I wish. That’s the “honey” part.
Out of approximately 100 new followers from October through November, about 97 were what I call “honey-bots.” These accounts are so obviously fake that it’s hard to get excited about them. I didn’t major in math, but that accounts for 3% of new followers as legitimate. That’s just stupid.
Who are these bots, and why are they generating so much fake traffic and amplifying disinformation in many cases?
Linda – Sales(wo)manship or Lies?
Linda Yaccarino, Twitter/X’s CEO, AKA MDC “Musk Damage Controller,” or “Minister of Propaganda” / MOP, as in MOP up Musk’s mess, or whatever she’s being called today, was telling glib fibs about Twitter’s traffic and new users in December in a vain attempt to ease advertisers’ concerns and bring them back into the fold.
You see, Miss Yaccarino, former ad chief at NBC Universal, is a CEO in name only. She was recruited to help Musk fix his ad revenue problem and, ostensibly, his impulse control problem. While all this was going on, I was getting followed by scores of bots, almost all honey bots.
QUESTIONS, QUESTIONS, QUESTIONS?
I had all kinds of questions, like
1) Why?
2) Who
3) Do the advertisers that Miss Yaccarino courts pay for those bots, or are they thrown in for free?
4) How many bots are on Twitter, and are they part of the “Million New Users” Miss Yaccarino was boasting about in December?
I know that because of my outspoken support for Ukraine, I’m targeted by the Russian bot and troll farms, but these honey bots SEEM harmless. But are they? Really? I don’t know. Not to the advertisers who pay for real people to see their ads.
Some folks ask why I’m still on Twitter when I disagree with their so-called “Free Speech” policy of allowing hate speech and disinformation to thrive. I’ve almost quit several times, and I’m nowhere near as active as I once was.
But I keep hoping that someday Musk will see that hate speech and conspiracy theory peddling from bot farms is not good business even though it generates zillions of fake traffic.
Or that advertisers will finally understand the medium they’re buying and pull out for THOSE reasons.
Musk retweets a hateful trope. That isn’t good. Pull your ads.
But as a steward for their clients’ marketing dollars, with so much apparent fake traffic on Twitter/X, should digital agencies have put their advertisers on Twitter/X in the first place?
Some will likely return in 2024 until Mr. Musk says the next stupid, offensive thing. Then, we’ll start this cycle all over again. But the bots, after taking a short break when I was “outing” them to Miss Yaccarino on Twitter/X back in December, are now back and “bitter than ever.”
Genuine users can hardly be found, and their numbers seem to plummet daily.
Why on earth would a marketer invest precious ad dollars on Twitter/X? WHY!?
Then again, based on a recent ad for the “Enigma Wave Orgasmic Revolution for Women,” which popped up on my feed, I thought, “Hmm, maybe these are REAL WOMEN and not honey bots, and I am witty, handsome, and charming after all?”
On Twitter/X, delusional conspiracy theories are part of the game. I’m going with it.
POST SCRIPT: An excellent way to combat media disinformation, such as X engages in, is to alert advertisers who may be unwittingly supporting disinformation, misinformation, unfounded conspiracy theories, or hate speech. Here are a few resources that are doing great work.
GPAHE – Global Project Against Hate & Extremism
