Member-only story
Medium | Bots | AI | Gratitude | Humor
Dear Medium — Thank You
for taking action
Back in April, I was followed by several accounts that screamed WTF to me.
Why? They were pretty new, all had 1000 or more followers, they followed thousands of accounts, signed up for notice of my new articles, and had their own articles all posted on or about March 20th.
Being a researcher who still sees weirdness in some statistics, I looked into several of these accounts.
My first thought was who is here for such a short time and follows so many? After looking at their followings, I saw they formed a pattern. In some cases all accounts they followed had PhDs, or were Friends of Medium, or at least Medium members. The accounts themselves were usually NOT members.
When I see accounts that raise questions, I hesitate to read their posts as I do not wish to credit money to them. But as these were not members I felt freer to scan some posts — and they were bland AI-type articles.
I can imagine how one can post many articles in one day — maybe, like me, they had them stored in drafts and had not yet finished them — then had a day to work on all — and so posted.
