MEDIUM | WRITING | AI BOTS

Do You Remember What Happened?

Back in September 2023, right here on Medium

Sorry for the tag, guys. I have tagged some people who have reacted to and shown interest in my previous post on this subject. I assure you, I will not abuse the tags for those who find themselves on this list “out of the blue.”

Before I jump straight to the subject of this article, I have to mention that my views relating to AI content have changed significantly over the past year. Mainly due to the fraudulent activities that happened in September 2023.

Until that date, I had a mellow stance about this subject. It did not bother me that much, despite the fact that I lacked the ability to see any beauty in it. But when I heard about the fraudulent activities, that made me ask myself some questions.

If I remember right, the Medium official statement said that they discovered 20 people and 600 accounts involved in the said fraudulent activity. From what I understand, the premise was that these people were actually bots.

I’m not tech-savvy, so I have no clue how the bots work. But for these bots to be able to stay on a page and interact with a story to the point in which they generate profit for the article they visit, they must emulate humans to a certain extent. Right?

But what if it was more human-based? Let’s say each of those 20 people was in charge of 30 accounts, all with a Medium membership and part of the Partner Program.

What if they used ChatGPT to post a 1-minute story a day on all 30 accounts? That would take at best 2 to 3 hours (a generous overestimate pulled out of my own ass) to copy/paste the articles and publish them.

This would leave them plenty of time to use every account to read 29 stories (or a multiple of that) every day. They could have used Account #1 to read one story from Account #2 to Account #30. Then use Account #2 to read one story from Account #1 and one story from Account #3 to Account #30. And so on.

Maybe Medium had or has some contingency in place to prevent the same person from using multiple accounts to generate money for themselves. But what happens when Scammer 1 teams up with Scammer 2?

Could Scammer 1 use his 30 accounts to read one story from the 30 accounts Scammer 2 has, and vice versa, to farm coins for each other? Basically, this would be regarded as a read-for-read variation, but a very unnatural one that goes beyond supporting and encouraging each other.

My question is, would publishing 6, 7,… 10, and so on stories a day through one or multiple accounts be possible without the use of AI-writing? Even more so when you factor in high engagement with other people?

Based on my experience, that would be impossible. If you write your own articles without ChatGPT while also supporting other writers, publishing more than 2 to 4 articles a day while engaging with others would be a hard feat.

In that situation, you either publish more and engage less or you engage less and publish more during a specific period. There’s no other way to keep up with both once you get past a certain limit.

That’s why it is my impression that any fraudulent activity that could take place on this platform has more chances to come from people who are not genuine writers. An AI-bot writer would be the most likely suspect of using bogus tactics and acting like a coin farm.

Is This Legit?

It came to my knowledge that some people think that opening multiple tabs is a way to be “efficiently engaging” and generate money for more than one story at the same time.

Does Medium allow this tactic, or is this considered cheating? Bots or not, why should opening two tabs and using the text-to-speech function on Article 1 by Person X while reading Article 2 by Person Y count as a genuine form of engagement?

And how would MindBend know that this counts (from a monetary and statistical point of view) without trying it? That’s a nice way to tell on themselves, huh?

I doubt it will generate more than 1 or 2 cents for every tab that you open. Even more, my impression was that you have to not only stay 30 seconds on a page for your view to count as a read, but to make sure the page is not static.

Meaning that during those 30 seconds, the reader has to scroll down the page at a certain interval. At least once or twice, maybe. But you won’t be able to do that simultaneously on multiple story tabs.

I use multiple tabs when I manage my publication, as I insert the guidelines at the bottom of each writer’s post. But I don’t do it for the sake of coin farming, like some people seem to do.

The Diana Meresc Inccident

Unlike someone who I will address in the following days, I have the balls to post the names of people who I suspect of foul play and be very direct about my doubts.

And I do so with screenshots that would either make me sound silly or on to something. I leave room to be contested, so the people can judge things for themselves.

As it turns out, most of the individuals that I suspect are also found suspicious by other people, based on what people openly say or share with me in private notes. That tells you something.

I have suspected Diana Meresc since long ago. Not only was “she” churning out a huge number of AI posts every day, she was also exhibiting signs of AI bot commenting and clap-and-running.

Well, I was not the only one suspecting her. Here are three other people just like me:

There are a few more. I won’t list them all. But it’s clear that most people are annoyed by such bogus accounts.

Medium has officially stated they rejected the proposal to let these AIs get trained using our articles and stories. That decision is said to be based on the feedback they got from Medium users who said, “Fuck no!” to AI content.

If so, then it’s normal for most people to be suspicious and skeptical about anything that could be remotely AI or fraudulent activity.

What do you guys think about this whole post? Feel free to correct me or add to this topic in the comment section if you think I am wrong or have missed something.

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