Hacker Busts Startup Running Huge Web of AI-Generated “Influencers” on TikTok
“404 Media reports in an explosive scoop that Doublespeed has been hacked. This wasn’t just one account associated with the startup, but the entire backend used to manage its phone farm — so it provides an extraordinary glimpse at how the service is actually being used to manipulate social media at scale. Not only is Doublespeed a possible breeding ground for disinformation campaigns or financial scams, but they seem to be getting away with their phone farm operation without any pushback from TikTok.”
Which all just goes to show yet again, many “influencers” are not even real people, the follower, likes and comment numbers also just cannot be trusted.
I posted only about a month ago about how Twitter used to fake the post views to charge advertisers more money, for adverts that were not seen by those numbers at all.
Once money and advertising get involved on a platform you don't pay to use, it all gets very murky. It's all about driving engagement up, and faking numbers, to fleece advertisers. I really don't think the owners of Facebook, X, Instagram, TikTok, etc are really interested at all about the social side of social media, nor the end user experience.
Many of us remember how these networks were in their early days, when you interacted with real humans. Today, most of these accounts have AI-generated responses to any comments.
If you still want human social interaction and some moderation of chats, you'll need to look to decentralised social media today.
See
Hacker Busts Startup Running Huge Web of AI-Generated "Influencers" on Instagram
A hacker found a way into the backend of AI startup Doublespeed, which offers customers access to a massive phone farm network.
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