Reviewer 2 @reviewer2@qoto.org

So take this post about twitter bots from @jsrailton one step further:
https://mastodon.social/@jsrailton/111869872361186177

Whats in it for the people running the bots?

Since twitters on-platform monetization is much lower than the cost of the bots, its not that.

This is bot seeding - you cant just stroll up brand new with a thousand new accounts, thats way too easy to detect and filter. You need to prepare the bots long beforehand, give them lots of organic-seeming activity, get them some algorithmic placement.

In other words, this is what an actively adversarial information platform looks like: the constant manufacture of informational weapons in plain view. These bots are prepped and ready to be deployed whenever a war needs to be sold, an election swung, a story drowned out, and so on. Bots dont exist because twitter is bad at moderation, they exist because it's extremely lucrative to rent bots to manufacture consent (also counting state actors, where profit and power are hard to disentangle).

In addition to the perverse incentive @jsrailton points to re: twitter not wanting to ban the paying bot customers, bots on twitter is also a symptom of its status as a theater of informational warfare, and how that is now core to its profit model.

When a government attempts to discredit The Hague, it's a sign something has gone terribly wrong in that country. My latest:

#cartoon #comic #politics #war #humanrights #gaza

Called it.