I'm assuming that's a troll / sarcasm / fake... But that could just be my last vestige of faith in humanity.

Edit: aaaand... That's another little sliver of my faith gone : https://www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/2026/04/how-fake-people...

Yeah, it's real. Say goodbye, faith!

How is this not grounds to be sued into oblivion by Google and Meta? They clearly violate ToS for profit. This is something I expect to find on a dark web forum where 0days are traded, not in public.

> How is this not grounds to be sued into oblivion by Google and Meta?

Because they don't care. It doesn't matter that it's AI slop, it generates views. And Google and Meta can bill advertisers for those views.

Zuckerberg is paying people to put AI slop Shrimp Jesus on facebook. (Not directly to platforms like this, but with the incentive structure)

Really, they're not just cashing in on the views of AI slop being put in front of boomers. They're cashing both ways; While the low end spam industry is merely guessing and iterating on whatever generates views, the more refined spammer does not leave the performance of their latest slop post up to chance, and just uses good old viewbotting. Viewbotting that these days, is mostly done on real devices. Which show ads, to the bots or underpaid developing world workers. Google and Meta'll still charge you for those impressions though.

The losers? People who sincerely try to use these platforms, and whatever idiot businesses are still paying for ads by the impression or click, rather than conversions that immediately generate revenue.

This kind of thing has been common for ages. Obviously AI has kicked it into overdrive, but it’s not darkweb kind of stuff.

Note that they do not mention any specific companies on that landing page. That is pretty intentional.

But realistically going after bots is expensive and rarely successful, so most companies don’t do it. Even if you find the guy, the chances they can be legally reached are pretty low.

Violating ToS isn't illegal in most cases. Companies just put scary looking clauses in their ToS to discourage you from doing things they don't like.

That's not true of course. There are hundreds of such cases with varying outcomes [0][1][2]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook,_Inc._v._Power_Ventur....

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDY_Industries,_LLC_v._Blizzar....

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBay_v._Bidder%27s_Edge

Note that all those guys were gotten for breaking the law, not for breaking terms of service.

Wow that is so dystopian.

Why is every startup using that same Serif font now, Garamond or whatever. Is it an LLM design phenomenon? Its kinda ruining that font style for me.

Also $1,500 a month for 10 "influencers" is wild. This doesn't seem that sophisticated unless they're doing something special to increase trust scores of accounts. They say they have "in house warming algorithm" which honestly doesn't inspire confidence for me.

Whats funny is its almost a certainty (if they are doing things correctly) that they have literal farms of phones (probably in SEA). The only real way to keep trust high is to have a real mobile connection and unique devices. Proxies are okay, but you really need to use the apps on real hardware.

I think the font is mimicking old Apple ads, eg: https://i.insider.com/5bf8592eb73c284de50e2f28

Ahh, that makes sense.

Yep. They got hacked in the past, 1k+ smartphones reported.

The cost is the attestation keys of a real phone. Once it gets burned, the phone is useless to them.

https://www.penligent.ai/hackinglabs/inside-the-ai-phone-far...

Interesting article, thanks. I've done a bit of small scale phone farming (for my own cheap mobile proxies). In all reality the phones aren't that expensive, I went with Moto 5gs that cost $130 (retail), so in their case the phones pay for themselves in the first month.

Probably a decent amount of compute cost for video generation, but I'm sure they have access to free compute and inference for being in bed with a16z.

If you are OK with carrier locks (eg if you don't need cell service) and are in the USA, you can actually get mot 5Gs for $30 at walmart. https://www.walmart.com/ip/Straight-Talk-Motorola-Moto-g-202...

Reckless Condensed?

These companies would have to buy one phone per fake influencer.