The spam posts did not originate on Bluesky; they were originally created on Nostr, pushed to Mastodon, and then subsequently to Bluesky. Although Bluesky quickly removed the spam, the original Nostr posts are still available for study.
It's a great day to read about a spammy real estate Substack blog with the catchy title "Realtors @ Substack", allegedly written by "Alexa Grace Kern", an author with a GAN-generated face. (There are a few other oddities as well.) https://conspirator0.substack.com/p/this-real-estate-blogger-does-not
It's a great day to read about a (hacked) Facebook page that has racked up nearly 200K followers by posting AI-generated images of alleged barndominiums.
(Also, I have now learned that the word "barndominium" exists thanks to Facebook spam.)
#FlashbackFriday: Here's an article about a network of automated retweet spam accounts that allegedly existed to promote taxi companies and other businesses in Virginia and DC, but spent most of their time retweeting political tweets. https://conspirator0.substack.com/p/flashback-friday-taxi
Reports of the effectiveness of paid verification at preventing spam have been somewhat exaggerated. Here's an analysis of a spam botnet on X consisting of over a thousand accounts with paid blue verification checkmarks. https://conspirator0.substack.com/p/the-nine-thousand-dollar-botnet
Here's a look at an X account with a GAN-generated face and a plethora of oddly convenient anecdotes. This is a case where any given anomaly could have a valid explanation, but the sheer number of red flags overwhelmingly point toward the account being fake.
Cryptocurrency/NFT spam from blue check accounts has become a recurring theme of advertising on X/Twitter in recent months. I kept track of the crypto spam ads I was served over the course of two days and did some analysis of the accounts involved. https://conspirator0.substack.com/p/blue-checks-ads-and-crypto-spam
Here's an article about a network of 575 spam accounts on X/Twitter that describe themselves as "politics enthusiasts". Come for the artificially generated faces, stay for the artificially generated text and accompanying error messages!
None of these people exist, but you can buy their books on Amazon anyway. Here's an article on Amazon authors with GAN-generated faces and the books these authors publish (which appear to be almost entirely devoid of original human-created content).
Here's a Substack article on the fascinating and delightful phenomenon of Gofundme repost spam on X/Twitter. (Needless to say, this is yet another thing that would be way easier to study if the Twitter API was still available.)
Data Scientist/Musician/Participant in the General Confusion. Resist autocracy and research/counter disinformation. I serve the realm.https://twitter.com/conspirator0https://conspirator0.substack.com/