r/smallbusiness • u/mapsedge • 10h ago
Bots.. what's the point?
We run an embroidery business and will frequently post pictures of our work to Facebook. The most common kind of contact we get isn't from customers but from bots, and the questions are always the same so they're easy to see.
How much does it cost? No mention of a project.
Do you ship to.. some location, and when I follow up with what they want there isn't anything.
How long does it take to do X?
They're all obviously bots, but there doesn't seem to be any end game to them. It's just a waste of time for me having to filter them out. So what's the point?
7
u/Affectionate-Pea1821 9h ago
They become "legitimate" accounts by engaging naturally, preventing them from being automatically deleted. Then they can fulfill their job without looking like a spam account.
4
u/BoGrumpus 9h ago
It's one of the new "tricks" that's kind of working right now. See... a part of how AI works is giving people entities and values just like domains and the commercial brands those domains point to. And one of the key ways the systems spot the fake bot posts is if they only go around promoting and interacting with one or a small set of brands and basically ignore everything else. That's now how humans work - they do more just just leave 5-Star reviews for your clients.
So, the trick - though I can't imagine a good long term work to reward payout - is to have your bot live a life online that the systems can see and make you look real.
The point, then, is to make it (try to) look more real. Just the next phase of the never ending war on spam.
G.
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u/AutoModerator 10h ago
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