Hand crafted bot accounts and community targeted ads, what's the story? - eviltoast

During the last two days it seems we have been “bombarded” with advertisement bots.

I found it curious, the advertisements are correctly targeted to sysadmins and security professionals. Meanwhile they have somewhat believable biographies (even if they are a little on the nose), suggesting hand crafted accounts.

Something they all have in common is their instance (discuss.tchncs.de) and that they have a “bachelors degree in computer science”.

This is not the first time I’ve seen adbots on Lemmy, but it’s the first time I’ve seen them on infosec.

Does anyone have any insight into the world of adbots they could share? I find myself increasingly curious in what goes on behind the curtains.

  • forcequit [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    yeah I’ve noticed at least three firstnamelastname accounts with posting twice within minutes. zero engagement, zero interactions.

    Does the instance in question have open registration? Either way, I think we’ll be dealing with drive-by marketing for a while yet