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Comment by spaceman_2020 | Hacker News Reader

spaceman_2020·

Going by how insanely viral OpenClaw has been on X, I don’t think any of the stars were bought

There were some comments somewhere below about that virality being bought though. I don't know how true that is or where those commenters got their information. If you look at google trends though there is practically no mention of ClawdBot before around January 23, even though the project was released in November.

he likely poured oil into the flame investing a few hundred bucks to double the virality

and according to HN, somehow that's a bad thing? Like making your own project more popular and successful using your own resources is...bad?

It was renamed many times. It was also called "clawdis" at one point, and prior to that "warelay," when it was simply a Whatsapp gateway for Claude Code. It was already gaining some momentum at that point but wouldn't reflect as search results for "Clawdbot," and especially wouldn't be visible on Google Trends when most of the conversation was on X/Github.

Even if the conversation was on other sites, people would still search for it.

Fake engagement doesn't need to be bought anymore.

This person created a bot factory. It's safe to assume that most of the engagement is coming from his own creation. This includes tweets, GitHub stars, issues and PRs, and everything else. He made a social network for bots, FFS.

He contributed to the dead internet more than any single person ever. And is being celebrated for it. Wild times.

> He made a social network for bots, FFS.

Matt Schlicht made Moltbook, not Peter Steinberger.

Well, you got me. That changes everything.

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