Influx of bots pushing Tether on Twitter

Twitter users reported that they found bot accounts promoted by crypto companies Tether and Bitfinex. This was stated by the journalists of the publication Protos.

They claim that the bot accounts are promoting the Tether (USDT) and Bitfinex (LEO) cryptocurrencies, creating fake support for these projects. They create fake materials about these tokens and communicate with each other, creating a stir around these cryptocurrencies.

Moreover, for their promotion, Tether hired special employees for $10 a day, who must advertise the company on Twitter. As a result, astroturfing campaigns are designed to look like a massive campaign run by a large number of smaller and less influential accounts.

How Tether and Bitfinex Astroturfing Works

“Signs of astroturfing or bots could be shared or fake profile pictures, low engagement, or low follower counts. For example, one of the suspected astroturfers uses an image of palm trees and has 146 followers despite having been around since 2012.

The main goal of bots is to find criticism of supported projects and protect them in social networks. As a rule, they have no evidence to support their point of view and cannot directly respond to criticism.

“For example, someone took a screenshot of an astroturfing account that said: “The coin has grown significantly <…> Even simply posting this screenshot on Twitter raised further suspicions of astroturfing,” the publication points out.

Users lost $870,000 due to fraudulent listings

Previously, researchers created a system for detecting fraudulent listings on Twitter. The team trained an artificial intelligence system to detect free token giveaway scams based on previous data. In total, they identified 95,111 fraudulent listings across 87,617 accounts.

According to analysts, more than 365 victims lost a total of $870,000 as a result of the actions of fraudsters and bots. At the same time, almost 44% of spam accounts remained active at the time of writing the results.

Source: Cryptocurrency

You may also like