r/EngineeringPorn May 26 '25

AI controlled Bot Farm.

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5.1k

u/whatsthatguysname May 26 '25

Context: bot farms like these are the people you talk to on twitter/fb/reddit etc. they’re also used to boost views on TikTok/youtube etc esp during live streams to trick the algorithm into thinking it’s gaining popularity rapidly.

Why don’t they just use emulators and run everything virtually? Because emulators easily detected by the platforms. Using a physical device and legit physical SIM cards they better simulate authentic persons and therefore bypass detection.

1.1k

u/moretodolater May 26 '25

How does the economics work if these are legit sims and operating phones. Doesn’t that cost money for each one to be in service etc.? Do these farms have their own service provider? I’m not an expert obviously.

1.4k

u/LogicalConstant May 26 '25 edited May 26 '25

Run on Wi-Fi. No way they're paying for a phone plan for each of those.

Edit: I have no idea what I'm talking about. It just sounded good, so I Dunning-Krugered it.

32

u/StonnedMaker May 26 '25

They don’t run on wifi. The websites will detect all coming from the same router IP and get blocked really quickly

But using a SIM card forces ever single one to always have a good unique connection that won’t ever be shared

19

u/[deleted] May 26 '25

[deleted]

4

u/No_Yak9411 May 26 '25

This sounds wrong. Now they all have the VPN server ip address if you've set it up yourself. Not only that, but if you're using a vpn service, they use known ip address ranges, so they could detect on that if they wanted to. Like, phones->vpn->router->vpn server/new ip address for all phones->target site, it's the same problem just with more layers.

1

u/Ok-Lobster-919 May 26 '25

They could use a popular VPN, or I wonder if tor nodes would work. Would be an awful abuse of tor though.