Almost every new 'follower' I've had in the last couple of weeks has been a bot. I've checked their profiles: all 'members since October 2024', one or two posts per day, all clearly AI-generated. I block the user and report 3 of their AI paywalled stories. If I can be bothered, which for the moment is 'usually', but will slip to 'very occasionally' before long.

I suggested months back that the medium gameplan was just to let bots read each other's stuff, along with some gullible human users, and skim the sub fee off the top as the money sloshes back and forth.

I think that's what we're seeing now.

One thing shocked me a little as I was browsing earlier: I had a look at the home page of music pub The Riff. It has 16K followers, and a good reputation. Articles posted there, by writers who clearly know their stuff, and are writing about acts like The Beatles, Taylor Swift, Elvis Presley, not obscure 70s prog rock, are getting barely 100-200 claps and a half-dozen comments (sometimes zero) for non-boosted pieces, after a couple of weeks. But these AI bot articles, Great Tips for a Healthy Diet', etc., are racking up several times that in a matter of days.

It makes no sense. Either extreme incompetence behind the algorithm, or complicit culpability.