Hacker News Reader

Just Google « buy x.com retweets » or similar and you will see a dozen company offering their services. Doesn’t look like a lack of activity on that area

View on HN

X has substantially fewer bots than the old Twitter. Heck, my past employer had a private API access to create unlimited number of accounts via a basic POST request.

I mean, yeah, that’s a very very low bar to be honest.

Though I believe the ratio of bot traffic is higher than it was before

It is important to remember that combatting bots isn't a binary state. Every effort to reduce bots results in a linear reduction in the proportion of bots, but never a complete eradication. There will always be people who are sufficiently motivated to spend the time and money and effort to overcome the safeguards.

I agree with the user above. It is infinitely harder how to run bots on X than it was on Twitter.

But X (formerly twitter) made it way easier for a bot account to appear legit. And the general user experience is still full of bot content. I don’t think it actually matters much if the barrier of entry is a bit more difficult to pass, but once in you have a verified checkmark + can act freely. Whatever they are doing, the result isn’t better than it was before

Reply on news.ycombinator.com