So how do these new bots make money?


One thing I'm rather curious about is how the new batch of bots get monetized. A lot of them seem to be... generic buzz creators like... "hey why is brand Z not talked about more?? "

And yeah,  clearly they are either automated or at least, not sincere.  I'm curious how they get paid though.  I mean, if you are a reputable manufacturer of consumer goods, do you pay for stuff like that??

erik_squires

@erik_squires I think they are in the R&D phase and they are just practicing.  I don't think they are monitizing their work right now.

Few examples…

1. Push certain products generating traffic to those websites 

2. Collect responses and using artificial neural network machine learning, feed the collected data to analytical models to evolve and increase effectiveness so that the responses can be more human like. End result Is the same - to generate traffic to specific websites of certain manufacturers or dealers.

That’s why it’s best to report the thread as opposed to responding to it and let the moderators take it down. 
 

 

@audphile1 I'm not sure they are that advanced yet (on this site) but maybe.

I do make one post to identify them as a bot because otherwise people will start replying to the post like it is a good post, which is the last thing we want to do.

Jerry

I don’t know about this site, but state actors work hard to shape public opinion and they must seem human and with a massive presence.

@vonhelmholtz - Of course, that makes sense, but some of these bots seem... well, pretty small potatoes.

I mean, if some one comes in here advertising Bud's Earbuds, I doubt it moves the sales needle, and yet they keep coming back.  Also when it's a big brand I have to wonder, are they really paying for this??

@erik_squires

State actors would be promoting disruptive opinions on political, social and news sites. What’s going on here is either kids with too much free time, or other agents refining their ability to seem relevant and human. The rest of us rarely try to seem human, nor relevant:)

New development. See @gertrude09 in this thread:

https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/problem-with-innuos-sense-won-t-play-selected-song

Bot joined yesterday.

First post was a paraphrase of my post above his and his second post had a link to some loan organization in it telling the op that after reseeting his streamer and Modem, he should reset his loan with a hyperlink to the target.

Jerry

Bots and the people who use them have honed their craft in politics for many years now. Doing this on an audio site for criminal gain would be small potatoes. It was going to happen eventually.

Once Prigozhin lost his mercenary army and went into exile, his online hacking business, The Internet Research Agency, along with it’s 1000 member troll farm (the Trolls from Olgino) and the bots they created had to find a new source of revenue. They even had a couple hundred Americans working with them.

Just two days ago I got a letter from my retirement fund informing me that a 3rd party member of theirs was hacked and that about 400,000 members had their name, date of birth, and SSN stolen. What I got out of it was a free 2 year membership with Experian IdentiyWorks and daily monitoring of my account.

They’re clumsy enough now to be detected now but watch out when they perfect their techniques. What a world, eh?

All the best,
Nonoise