I think many people know this, but not everyone. I am telling you this so that maybe you too can use this strategy in your future projects, or just get outraged and ignore the next provocative comment you read in one of these cases.
The trick is that large online news outlets share their articles on social media, and then deliberately use bot accounts that aggressively and/or provocatively comment on those news stories to increase engagement while instilling hatred among readers, which in turn leads to many more clicks in a sort of vicious cycle that benefits only them.
Now there is evidence of this and I will share it with you. First of all, I recommend you take a look at these screenshots:
https://ibb.co/BNTsBrfhttps://ibb.co/9sT5FWXhttps://ibb.co/bbC0rRf
They are Tweets in Italian so I will explain the context. Let's start with the author: The author of the Tweets in the image is Corriere della Sera (https://twitter.com/Corriere) one of Italy's largest newspapers (over 3 million followers on Twitter) and according to Similarweb, the news site reaches 87 million visits per month.
This morning they screwed up, as you can see from the images. Basically this twitter account started posting provocative and offensive Tweets, thickly tagging itself. But not only that: the interesting thing is that at the beginning of each message there is always a username. And guess what? Looking up that username on Twitter, it exists! It is obvious to draw the conclusion that those usernames are the bots that were supposed to comment below their posts but something must have gone wrong.
I'll translate the Tweets in the first image for more context:
Siluratore: @Corriere If the blame-shifting starts, it's done, the castle collapses!
Gabriele_physicist: #Pinco__PA @Corriere If he had that much money to spend rent was not a problem
redout: @Corriere Be a spoiled woman commuter
zero_dosi: @Corriere I for years commuted 100km to work!!! You are a generation of failures (in the image: Go fuck yourselves)
These were just the tweets in the first image (now removed from their account) and there are many as you can see from the screens, all on this tenor.
The trick is that large online news outlets share their articles on social media, and then deliberately use bot accounts that aggressively and/or provocatively comment on those news stories to increase engagement while instilling hatred among readers, which in turn leads to many more clicks in a sort of vicious cycle that benefits only them.
Now there is evidence of this and I will share it with you. First of all, I recommend you take a look at these screenshots:
https://ibb.co/BNTsBrfhttps://ibb.co/9sT5FWXhttps://ibb.co/bbC0rRf
They are Tweets in Italian so I will explain the context. Let's start with the author: The author of the Tweets in the image is Corriere della Sera (https://twitter.com/Corriere) one of Italy's largest newspapers (over 3 million followers on Twitter) and according to Similarweb, the news site reaches 87 million visits per month.
This morning they screwed up, as you can see from the images. Basically this twitter account started posting provocative and offensive Tweets, thickly tagging itself. But not only that: the interesting thing is that at the beginning of each message there is always a username. And guess what? Looking up that username on Twitter, it exists! It is obvious to draw the conclusion that those usernames are the bots that were supposed to comment below their posts but something must have gone wrong.
I'll translate the Tweets in the first image for more context:
Siluratore: @Corriere If the blame-shifting starts, it's done, the castle collapses!
Gabriele_physicist: #Pinco__PA @Corriere If he had that much money to spend rent was not a problem
redout: @Corriere Be a spoiled woman commuter
zero_dosi: @Corriere I for years commuted 100km to work!!! You are a generation of failures (in the image: Go fuck yourselves)
These were just the tweets in the first image (now removed from their account) and there are many as you can see from the screens, all on this tenor.
