Surprised they use real phones for this, I would think VMs and VPNs would be the most scalable.
Since their usage is probably forbidden my the TOS of the platforms they use, and the platforms will try to detect this kind of usage and ban users, I would assume that the closer they appear like natural usage, the more effective they are.
Running these apps on a emulator and using VPNs etc. will probably be a red flag.
It's a nightmare that we live in a world where this bullshit even exists.
Just another artifact of the fact that advertiser financed businesses is not robust. And the end of them is likely coming nearer.
Or that sci-fi predicted it (For The Win)
i actually just finished another re-read of For The Win, and yeah, that's gotta be more relevant now than ever before ._.
They appear to be scrolling through a single social media feed. This operation is likely what those social media "boosting" services are doing, where they'll bring a ton of new traffic to your profile to try to goad the algorithm into sending real users your way.
Is there a way to interact with GUI elements of Android using external device like a pc Or something?
There are a ton of things you can do with a keyboard natively on Android. I would imagine these use that plus a bit of software to emulate "real" movements, like the flicking down to scroll
Yes, you can control the phone programmatically if you unlock it and put it into dev mode.
Sure with like teamviewer or similar app. I'd guess they're running the bot on a computer which is remote controlling those phones
If it's just a browser you can connect to chrome devtools via web socket and send commands
So all my followers/adoring fans are just 1 guy with a laptop? [crushed]
All of my Twitter followers are thot-bots. I don't even get the good ones that have pictures of cats in their bio. Just poorly photoshopped Kim Kardashian body swaps.
Looks like these guys, seeding bot farm. Actually has some good writeups of their methodology.
What are they automatically making the phones do though?
Scrolling though a feed trying to convince the algorithm to promote said feed to others.
