Beware of Fake Engagement On Social Media Platforms

I just read the learnings from the recent AI ideas competition  by Ben Fowler . He mentions how people are basically getting all their friends to create accounts and like their ideas. They could be friends. Or something else. I don't know.

But that's not real engagement. Real engagement comes from real people who honestly like what you are working on and writing about. I love getting followers on social media but I want real followers. I've never sought out attention or tried any tricks to get more followers on social media. I just post things I'm working on or interested in and problems I'm trying to solve.

As with anyone I like followers. But I don't try to manipulate the system to get them. So in the past few weeks when I started getting like 100 followers every two days on X and I was like wow people must really like my research! But then I started looking at the accounts and it was odd because none of them posted anything. So I looked at their followers and all followed mostly the same 9 accounts.

I asked a question to all my "new followers" and none of them answered. No one posted back how they heard about me. Crickets. Hmm. Could be real but as another prominent security researcher commented back who was also targeted it's likely a bot army, sadly. Who knows.

I follow all but one of the people so I was skeptical but then I did a little research on bot armies. Here’s what they do to beat X’s algorithm:

Since I pushed this out to social media the accounts have shifted a bit - but I don't really have time to worry about this so not paying too much attention. Initially the accounts dropped a bit, now rising again. If you are all new real followers than thank you. 🙏 I look forward to seeing what you are working on and your thoughts. It's hard to tell without having back end logs to trace the source of all these new accounts and any traffic patterns so I don't really know.

These bot army tactics are used on X because that's what works on X. Other platforms have different mechanisms (algorithms) to try to detect artificial engagement and influence. Remember that just because someone has a lot of followers doesn't necessarily mean they are legitimate. And in today's world the fake comments are even easier to generate with AI than ever before.

Many fake profiles that looked highly legitimate with 10s of 1000s of followers have been exposed on X and facebook pushing various messages to try to influence public opinion. Be careful to follow good information, not just accounts with lots of followers. As my fellow hero and good friend Chris Miller  wrote in a recent post: Developers Are The New Attack Vector . Social media influence is one way to influence and target people to trick them into doing things they might not otherwise do.

At first I thought these followers on X might all be students because I used to have a list of cybersecurity people to follow in my class slides. And maybe they are, but none have responded. I mean they could have been given a list of people to follow and a whole class at once all followed me. I do give away my class materials for free on my blog so that could be it.

But looking at the names more closely they follow a pattern. Hmm. I can’t find any of these people with established profiles on LinkedIn but students like my nephew who recently joined won’t have an established profile, so that’s possibly ok.

And that is what makes distinguishing a bot farm from real users very tricky! Maybe they are real. Maybe not. But none of them responded when I put out a post asking them a question as to how they heard about me.

There's a lot of AI spam going around to trigger engagement and fake engagement posing as real engagement. I see a LOT of comments that look like pure AI and a lot of "hot takes" that are just noise on the Internet, nothing useful. Post something real! Whatever you are working on is fine. It doesn't need to be perfect. Just keep it real.

Be aware of all that but don't worry about all that too much. I don't. Just make sure you do solid research when you are implementing projects and checking multiple trusted sources. Yes I wrote that twice.

The type of things l personally like to follow are people doing novel research - something new and not regurgitated from other content (which can look like AI or I can find anywhere). The reason I don't follow the one person in that list of others is because this bot army is following is because the the others provide up to date new information and their own personal useful information and insights and the other account mainly interviews other people on a bunch of topics I'm only tangentially interested in. A lot of the interviews are with vendors trying to sell things as opposed to individual research. Interviews are totally fine and vendors are totally fine. It's just not what I personally follow for the most part unless I am actively using a product or service (like AWS!)

And on that note, I also really don't want to be on a podcast as I don't like being on video and I don't like being in panels because I don't like on the spot Q & A so you largely won't find people like me in those places either. Catch me speaking at a conference or read my blog or posting a steam of consciousness on some topic I'm working on via social media platforms. Is that how these bots found me? I did publish an article on Dark Reading a long time ago and have spoken at RSA where one person works. Maybe it has something to do with that. I don't know what the connection is besides some link to cybersecurity that caused these particular accounts to be selected.

For anyone who may be uncertain about publishing things on social media or a blog go for it! I wrote a post for you. Just keep it authentic and unique. Because you have a story and no one else has that story.

No AI bot can write your story. They don't know it. They don't know your personal struggles and what problems you hit and how you solved them. Your writing will be genuine and unique and others will follow if you are helping them solve their problems or writing about things that interest them. If you don't instantly get 10,000 followers don't worry about it. It takes time and good, authentic information and your own personal voice. If you are genuinely trying to help people rather than simply promote yourself, you'll get there.

Other accounts may never call this out and hence the large purges occasionally where account followers drop by large numbers at a time when the platforms figure out what they are doing. I’ll probably lose 1000’s of followers by writing this. We’ll see. But I called it out when I noticed it was a real trend.

I’m not a good influencer apparently. Just over here nerding out trying to solve problems and digging into Internet dirt.