this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2024
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interestingasfuck

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[–] [email protected] 67 points 1 month ago (2 children)

It's a nightmare that we live in a world where this bullshit even exists.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Or that sci-fi predicted it (For The Win)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

i actually just finished another re-read of For The Win, and yeah, that's gotta be more relevant now than ever before ._.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

Just another artifact of the fact that advertiser financed businesses is not robust. And the end of them is likely coming nearer.

[–] [email protected] 66 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

They appear to be scrolling through a single social media feed. This operation is likely what those social media "boosting" services are doing, where they'll bring a ton of new traffic to your profile to try to goad the algorithm into sending real users your way.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 month ago (4 children)

Is there a way to interact with GUI elements of Android using external device like a pc Or something?

[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 month ago

There are a ton of things you can do with a keyboard natively on Android. I would imagine these use that plus a bit of software to emulate "real" movements, like the flicking down to scroll

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 month ago

Sure with like teamviewer or similar app. I'd guess they're running the bot on a computer which is remote controlling those phones

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago

Yes, you can control the phone programmatically if you unlock it and put it into dev mode.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago

If it's just a browser you can connect to chrome devtools via web socket and send commands

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 month ago (1 children)

So all my followers/adoring fans are just 1 guy with a laptop? [crushed]

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

All of my Twitter followers are thot-bots. I don't even get the good ones that have pictures of cats in their bio. Just poorly photoshopped Kim Kardashian body swaps.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago

https://minsoftware.vn/

Looks like these guys, seeding bot farm. Actually has some good writeups of their methodology.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Surprised they use real phones for this, I would think VMs and VPNs would be the most scalable.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago

Since their usage is probably forbidden my the TOS of the platforms they use, and the platforms will try to detect this kind of usage and ban users, I would assume that the closer they appear like natural usage, the more effective they are.

Running these apps on a emulator and using VPNs etc. will probably be a red flag.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)

What are they automatically making the phones do though?

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 month ago

Scrolling though a feed trying to convince the algorithm to promote said feed to others.