Synthetic Messenger: A botnet scheme for climate news

I want to like this as an art project but just can't.

Yes, it's interesting to point out that manipulating content algorithms to favor special interests is a reality. It would have been nice to at least acknowledge that this is generally not employed for wholesome causes.

Mostly, though, this just literally doesn't work.

I upvoted this because its an amazing example of a project achieving the exact opposite of what it aims to do (bring money/views to positive climate change). Remarkably, these are professors at NYU and UT Austin.

As soon as they see how the extremely high CTR results in zero conversions on the landing ad page the value of such articles will go from something to zero.

If anything, this will devalue climate content in the eye of advertisers.

EDIT: No, seriously. This is *BAD*. It is technically interesting but super counterproductive and will have the opposite result of what it was made for in the first place.

This is insane. Check out the live feed of a bot in action - a browser being automated, with various photos of human hands clicking the ads, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEHgOTgtGso . It may or may not be broadcasting but you can seek to the past.

"Scroll scroll scroll... click click click click..."

Cool! Activism as a service; offer a subscription and let people pay for bot clicks for keywords ... like advertising backwards!

With AI written stories and automated engagement, literacy is superfluous, all us meat bags need do is sit back and let the decisions of our betters propagate through our lives.

So the rate of ad-fraud on climate news will be higher?

I guess they expect to get caught, and make headlines as well? Otherwise, why make a website and YouTube stream?

So the meta-game is, they're expecting to get caught and that there'll be headlines about them trying to game the system to elevate news about climate change, and those articles will inevitably also talk about the need to pay attention to climate change.

This is exactly everything wrong with the internet in one neat little package:

* Polarized, politicized, incendiary topic? Check. * Unclear intentions? Check. * Media manipulation on a grand scale? Check. * Fake traffic to websites? Check. * Publishers scoring fraudulent clicks? Check (maybe) * Somehow, being awesome in spite of all of the above. Check.

This is bad. Publishers could get kicked off the ad networks as a result of this activity.

Good conceptual art should be like a PoC exploit for what people percieve as real. Either it prompts us to patch our beliefs with concrete experience, or we just accumulate intellectual debt that eventually makes us unable to grow, respond, or cope, and become utterly dependent on surrounding ourselves with people who preserve our fictions for us and we'll give them anything to just reassure us of the safety of our compliance.

This one isn't a wormable meme, but it exposes a glimpse of the cultural substrate and challenges our ability to sustain dissonance.

One of the links was an article titled "in the current NFL climate, owners should hire more offensive coaches", with no mention of climate change. Looks like they need to improve how they pick the articles

https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2021/01/05/in-the-curr...

From the technical perspective this is a great execution of an idea. But those actions will probably be considered as ad-fraud and web sites will be penalized by ad-networks.

I think that ultimately this project might do more environmental harm by consuming more electricity (therefore creating carbon emissions) to function/transfer webpages then it can offset by increasing engagement with environmental content.

If I was desiring to make false flags against global warming, I maybe would attempt this idea first.

So they built a click fraud farm? The advertisers they're defrauding could probably sue them.

This is just going to make the ads on climate content look like click fraud.

Watching the bots live on the Zoom meeting is surreal. There's literally a hand there with a finger extended poking on every ad and clickbaity headline.

For what purpose…?

I... don't know what to say about this right now. I'm reading the AdNauseam paper, to see whether that helps.

This has... disturbed me.

This is horrible. This feels like the public isn’t interested in a topic as much like a group is expecting them to be, so the group fakes interest. It reads like “for your own good”. I predict that this will have zero impact on greenhouse gas emissions.

Is this created by the oil lobby to increase click fraud for climate change articles? Lmao