Saw 40 fake follower accounts in one Twitter thread about a local diner

Was scrolling a post about Joe's Diner in Tulsa and noticed the replies. Every other comment had a random girl's photo, zero bios, and a link to some crypto thing. They all posted within 2 minutes of each other. I counted 40 of them before I stopped. The diner's account itself seemed real, but the engagement was clearly bought. Has anyone else spotted this on small business posts lately?

2 comments

2 Comments

cooper.phoenix1mo ago

...which is funny because I actually fell for one of those fake accounts last month. Not on Twitter, but on Facebook, some account claiming to be a local bakery's page was running a giveaway. I entered my email, got spam for a week straight. Meanwhile the real bakery had no idea it was happening. I guess the bots are getting better at picking small businesses with loyal customers, which sucks because it makes you question every reply. My rule now is if a post has more than a handful of comments from accounts with no profile pics and weird usernames, I just skip the whole thread. Joe's Diner probably didn't buy those bots, but good luck proving that to anyone who sees it.

annas871mo ago

Man, that is painfully familiar. I once spent a whole weekend replying to what I thought was a real cooking group on here, and turns out it was like 12 bots and one overly enthusiastic guy named Steve who kept posting about his air fryer. @cooper.phoenix is right, the bots are getting sneaky, and I guess my social radar is basically a broken smoke detector at this point. It makes you feel like a total rube when you realize you've been chatting with a script for an hour and a half. But honestly, I'll take the spam email over having to explain to my friends why I'm arguing with a crypto avatar about biscuit recipes. The whole thing just leaves a bad taste in your mouth, and not the good kind from Joe's chili.