MEDIUM | ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | RULES
Is Medium in on it?
Are AI bots taking over Medium?

As this story below got more attention than I actually expected,
thank you for all the readers and your comments, with every read and comment my interest grew — enough to do a follow up story.
These fake accounts are literally stealing attention from our real writers and readers. Can it be that the purpose of this careful and timely set-up concerns the upcoming elections in USA? This clever thought was made by one of the readers.
So I went back to these fake accounts and did some reading. Some of their stories, not that bad — the formatting is a bit weird as expected and sometimes non-existent, but some of the articles actually deliver something meaningful. That’s because usually they are being copied from foreign writers, translated, and then published under a different title.
Without further ado, here is the 11-day follow up of these fake accounts, 16.06.2020. I decided to tag them in, just in case I am wrong about them being fake and possibly to light up a real and certainly an interesting conversation.
Praveen now has 2 stories, combined claps of 85, no comments.

Geoffrey has 2 stories, combined claps of 170, no comments.

George has 3 stories, combined claps of 286, one helpful reader commented suggesting adding another category to the article. Comment hasn’t been replied for 11days, naturally.

Margaret has 2 stories, combined claps of 59, two comments, one of the comments actually hinting that the author has copied her published story.

Laila is most successful from this fake bunch of five. She has 3 stories, combined claps of 349, and her articles have a total of 9 comments from 7 different people.

Some passages from her comments:
“Thanks for being you and for being my friend. Fondly, Judy…”
“Another award-worthy piece offering, Laila…”
“Lots of great ideas here, Laila. Thanks for sharing your professional insight…”
“Greetings, Laila. I pray that all is well with you and yours during this time of reflection and reconnection…”
That is how a one-way communication looks like between reader and writer, unfortunately.
And I am following three of these readers who have commented and I have read their own stories. Real human stories, sometimes very personal.
I don’t know.
I really don’t know.
Are these fake accounts beneficial or are they harmful? Does it go against community standards? Could it be detected by Medium? Is Medium in on it?
Greetings, Chowa.

Update to the story. Since today, 18th of June 2020, these 5 accounts can’t be found on Medium anymore. Thank you Medium for taking action.






