
An Internet propaganda campaign at your fingertips - jonaslund
https://it-was-fun-at-first.net/about
======
badkungfu
I think this is brilliant social satire come to life. Can there be a block
chain of people who "trust" a source within the net and where central claims
originate?

~~~
na85
Judging by the number of comments taking seriously, it might be a little too
brilliant ;)

~~~
kevinstubbs
There is a .zip you can download, and a link to give it access to your Twitter
account. That's enough to make me think it's legitimate :) If you are brave
enough to go through either of the steps, let me know what's at the end of the
rainbow.

------
tn13
I like the idea. But I don't see why this should have a horrible red
background.

~~~
_rpd
> I like the idea.

A voluntary bot net is still a bot net. And I wonder how voluntary it really
is? Can you easily decline further participation if you start to disagree with
some of the "fake news" it is spamming?

~~~
excalibur
One would think that simply changing the password on the Twitter account would
be the end of it. But for the curious, I would still recommend establishing a
"burner" account for testing purposes.

------
insulinrocks
This looks like it will end up like Microsoft's inadvertently racist chat bot,
except it will be people and on purpose. And it'll happen faster.

~~~
garrettgrimsley
The bot, Tay, was taken offline after about 16 hours. There was an organized,
purposeful effort by /pol/ to train Tay to be racist.

~~~
insulinrocks
Damn. Fair enough, I must have missed that. My thoughts on its fate remain
unchanged though, haha.

------
sandworm101
I'll call shenanigans on this one:

>> In order to hire the Botnet you first need to join the bots with your
Twitter account.

Any actual commercial enterprise, legal or not, would take your money without
asking your participation.

~~~
SomeStupidPoint
Are credit unions not "actual commercial enterprise"?

~~~
sandworm101
In a credit union it is your money that is doing the participating. They don't
ask for your car keys before taking your money. These guys are taking your
money but first want your twitter account ... or at least some twitter
account. I assume most "customers" will create and submit dummy accounts.

~~~
SomeStupidPoint
In a credit union, you must give them money to purchase a share of the CU
before they'll take your money -- you literally have to buy in.

Requiring a Twitter account just changes the form of payment from being all
dollars.

------
zitterbewegung
I wouldn't trust this system with my twitter credentials and I expect this
site to get a fun letter from twitter and maybe countermeasures .

~~~
bduerst
Yeah, this is terrible on several levels. The lack of any transparency about
who is running it should be as red a flag as that background color.

------
siegecraft
I like the idea but sadly I'm sure it's more of a marketing effort than an
actual platform. I've been saddened to not be able to find social media
marketplaces that provide an actual twitter platform (ie programmable). All
you can buy is x thousands of account blasting an identical message. Or maybe
I haven't been looking hard enough?

~~~
jonaslund
One of the authors here. You can actually use spintax to compose your tweets.

------
noobermin
I like the inline comment in the page source.

------
anonbanker
Mac-only? Where's the linux port? :)

