A16z-backed Doublespeed hacked, revealing what its AI-generated accounts promote

[pinewurst]

https://archive.ph/20uwc

[boh]

AI is pretty much killing social media in the long term. Even pre-AI, a good chunk of posts/comment sections on sites were bots/paid. Reddit is becoming less believable than ChatGPT. I guess there's still the Onion-verse.

[cgh]

Yes, Dead Internet Theory went from joke to reality in what feels like overnight.

[themafia]

I'm not convinced you can have an impromptu global conversation to any positive end. Humans are not well suited to this task and an unsupervised mostly anonymous forum plays to those weaknesses and provides no support to generate positive outcomes.

It was never a particularly good idea at the scale it's currently deployed at.

[anovikov]

This is a good thing. More and more people will stop consuming it, going back to the mainstream media, so will perhaps become more sensible.

[riversflow]

Reddit died to me when they allowed private profiles this summer.

[osn9363739]

I thought the same. I'm still 90% of the same mindset. But it does worry me how much people like slop. But is it because it's novel? and will people get tired of it?

[barfoure]

> Reddit is becoming less believable than ChatGPT.

Hard disagree, and I’ll cite a simple example: Reddit isn’t one community. It’s a hub and spoke model. There are many good communities with curators and SMEs.

My canonical example that’s counter to this is HN. No offense to anyone but Reddit doesn’t have a hive mind - communities do. And HN hive mind is wrong more often than right and has been targeted by all sorts of astroturfers along the way. I personally take very few comments on here seriously, no takes seriously, and mostly show up to read comments by some actual hard cred people (f.e. animats). Everyone else might as well be a shill bot. AI doesn’t change this. I still get cream of the crop from Reddit.

Having said that, social media isn’t dead. It’ll transform. Two things are eternal: 1) women’s need for attention, 2) men’s need to get laid.

[ajross]

"Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind."

Seems like the Butlerian Jihad is arriving ahead of schedule, and the real horrors demanding the uprising aren't oppression and violence, but viral marketing and sockpuppetry.

[jaredcwhite]

Yeah, but also the violence already started via hacked brains. OpenAI is having to fend off multiple lawsuits because its chatbot users started taking their own lives.

[bicepjai]

So this is the reality we're living in now, where bot farms have become normalized? I always associated bot farms with authoritarian regimes like Russia and China, but are we becoming the same thing? And VC funds are actually backing this? I hope I'm not the only one who finds this completely insane. I can't even listen to the a16z podcast anymore; my mind now permanently associates them with bot farms. These are the news that makes me think does people ever think about moral values and ethics.

[sellmesoap]

Gorilla marketing and bot farms have been around for a very long time. There are bot farms to amplify all sorts of messages. A friend who is a 'performance artest' paid almost nothing to have his linked-in account amplified by a large number of nonsense accounts on that platform. 'creators' frequently buy followers so 'the algorythm' will surface their 'content'. My first roommate 20 years ago almost got a job riding the train and having 'organic' conversations about how great some product is. My solution is to buy nothing and poke and laugh at everything. (Edited for spelling)

[aomix]

I keep believing there’s a web of trust type future for social media but I can’t articulate it.

[CamelCaseName]

Hack reveals that startup is doing exactly what it said it was doing

Okay, is this just an ad then?

[technion]

Hilarious - i was literally just telling someone that im seeing no end of ads for vibit, and the dozens of glowing comments looked fake to me.

[Noaidi]

My god, horrific. Does not everyone know everything online is a psyop now? I will tel you, they don't. No one studies things, no one takes the time. AI, social media, it all has to be protested, boycotted.

Now it seems war is coming from the US it could not be more true that at this moment.

[Hizonner]

How about a few prison terms for conspiracy to defraud? And not for small fry like the "CEO" of this company either. Why not, say, 10 years for Marc Andreesen, personally? And, no, no "disrupting" it with serve-your-time-as-a-service, either.

[nathancahill]

> He posted on HN.

The call is coming from inside the house.

[hhh]

No, we should not stop something that is inevitable. We should work with it to find ways that it fits into a productive society, such as anonymously verifying that you are a citizen so the cost of abuse is at least a felony.

[ipython]

wow... honestly, reading the Twitter feed for Zuhair ("CEO" of DoubleSpeed) makes me sick. https://x.com/rareZuhair and https://www.zuhair.io/.

If you want more photos of his phone farm... it's all on his twitter page: https://x.com/rareZuhair/status/1961160231322517997

"Accelerating the dead Internet"? Why are we, as a community, encouraging the acceleration of enshitification of our common spaces? So weird to me...

[qingcharles]

He's doing it for the ragebait, but the sad thing is the product is totally real. Cory was right from the start.

[neilv]

He sounds like an intelligent but misguided teenager. Maybe he's not a bad kid, and just needs better role models than the companies he mentions.

If we never do things that later make us cringe and want to correct, we're not reflective and self-critical enough.

[dredmorbius]

Accessible link: <https://xcancel.com/rareZuhair>.

[thephyber]

The risky thing about creating this tool is that someone will inevitably use it against the creator, the employees, and the investors.

[Noaidi]

It is not weird, it is greed and control.

[bpt3]

WTF happened to a16z?

They used to be at the pinnacle of the VC sector, and now they seem to actively seek out the most toxic portcos possible.

[jbhoot]

Andreessen's true colours have often flared up. I noticed it when India banned Facebook's Free Basics scheme. He had needlessly, without provocation, lashed out like a child who was denied an ice-cream cone. I will never forget his now-deleted tweet:

> Anti-colonialism has been economically catastrophic for the Indian people for decades. Why stop now?

https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-35542497

[camillomiller]

Nothing. Egghead has always been an evil villain. He just fooled you all long enough, until he could show his real face without repercussions

[drcongo]

Really?! They've always made a little bit of sick come up for me. Marc Andreessen has always been a grotesque parody of Lex Luthor.

[bflesch]

If you read "Careless People" you'll notice that Andreesseen was prioritizing cash over morals for a long time, and his Facebook investment/involvement was also producing highly unethical things

[neuroelectron]

Once you have infinite money, you tend to want infinite power next

[tolerance]

Looks like this is a report on how the company just…handles its business: https://doublespeed.ai/

[jfindper]

>"never pay a human again."

>"Take proven content and spawn variation."

It's almost refreshing how unashamed they are. I hate it, obviously, but I kind of like it better than companies that say something dressed up in marketing speak but actually mean what this site just says outright.

[coffeebeqn]

Wow I thought this type of business was illegal or at least a very gray area conducted on the dark web but looks like the VCs at this point have no morals left. Gambling? Amazing. Spam? Take my money. Ad fraud? Yes please

[ryanjshaw]

How does one profit from this farm of AI content on TikTok?

[jonas21]

Yeah, it's basically free publicity for them.

[UncleMeat]

Holy crap. They really are leaning into "evil supervillain" advertising copy.

[2OEH8eoCRo0]

Why isn't this company sued for computer fraud and abuse?

[gruez]

Because using the CFAA as a cudgel against things you don't like, whether it's journalists exposing insecure government systems, or companies engaging in deceptive marketing practices is a bad idea? For the latter, there's already laws against it that doesn't involve CFAA, eg. https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-16/chapter-I/subchapter-B...

[Nextgrid]

When you're a company with funding and/or a network of benefactors behind it a lot of laws stop applying. And if all else fails, I hear pardons aren't particularly expensive these days.

[SilverElfin]

This feels not very different from the recent report revealing how Nick Fuentes has a lot of artificial likes and comments on videos that push his content, due to a large following that responds to commands delivered via Telegram etc. A VC backed corporation using a large phone farm to manipulate the public is no better than Nick Fuentes.

[bossyTeacher]

How long until the company gets sued by X/Meta/Tik Tok?

[heroprotagonist]

They don't even take down the spam you report. I doubt they'll do anything until their user base declines.

[hephaes7us]

Bot activity could push up engagement metrics on these platforms, so (in some sense) those companies aren't necessarily incentivized to stop this.

[fny]

The Internet is dead. Long live the Internet.

[queuebert]

Let's be honest. It's been mostly downhill since AOL.

[grahamlee]

As the submitter, I want to point out that I submitted this post with the original title. The one that makes it clear a16z are behind the social media astroturfing. The mods changed the title.

[tomhow]

That’s fine, you did nothing wrong. I explained the title change here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46307121.

Edit: The community has spoken and I've come up with a way to include a16z in the title whilst keeping it under 80 chars.

[1vuio0pswjnm7]

Actual title: "Hack Reveals the a16z-Backed Phone Farm Flooding TikTok With AI Influencers"

[shagmin]

Original title was better in multiple ways. Mods did a disservice here.

[gnabgib]

Yes.. it was updated to this by mods

[1vuio0pswjnm7]

Perhaps of interest

There is an 80-character limit on titles

This title is 75 characters

[yodon]

Streisand effect?

A mod changed the title to something other than the originally submitted original article title, to protect a major VC.

Not cool.

[dang]

I haven't looked at the article but its title is pretty baity and that's probably why we changed it, per https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

[kotaKat]

And it’s been shunted to the third page as of 8:20 AM ET the next morning. Really interesting behaviour going on.

[nickphx]

why was the original title edited to remove the reference to a16z? why hide investment into socially unacceptable product? if you are going to be a scumbag weasel, own it.

[tomhow]

Edit: Fine! I found a way to get a16z in there and keep it to 80 chars.

Both for length reasons and because it was clickbait.

The original title doesn’t even have the actual company’s name in it, only the name of the investor, which is intended to elicit just the kind of ragey reaction you’re exhibiting in this comment.

On HN, titles need to be more neutral and factual (I.e., include the name of the company the article is primarily about).

(Also, you seem to be implying some conflict of interest? Doublespeed and a16z have nothing to do with HN/YC.)

[kotaKat]

* * *

[tomhow]

I explained the title here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46307121

[sp527]

> The hacker, who asked for anonymity because he feared retaliation from the company, said he reported the vulnerability to Doublespeed on October 31

Lmao. Nice.

[ackfoobar]

I checked out one of the accounts mentioned, mostly to check if I can discern fake accounts. The content is just still pictures. I'd dismiss those whether or not they're AI. Well, I'm not on TikTok anyway.

This reminds me of some youtube videos when I was researching some stuff to buy. Those videos are just still images plus text-to-speech narration, usually with an annoying background music.

[lawlessone]

>Well, I'm not on TikTok anyway.

I'm not on tiktok and the videos often won't play for me because of that.

Are they still images as videos with tts or literally just still images?

[mmooss]

> mostly to check if I can discern fake accounts

You are making yourself easier to fool: You don't know which fake accounts you overlooked, and by increasing your confidence you make yourself more vulnerable to them in the future.