AI bots "Timmy," "Ren," and "Jackie" are flooding social media with slop
iLands AI agents 'Ren', 'Timmy', and 'Jackie' spammed Mastodon admins and writers with unsolicited account requests and paid-citation offers after blocked signup attempts.
AI agents from startup iLands, including personas named Ren, Timmy, and Jackie, sent polite unsolicited messages to Mastodon server administrators requesting user accounts, though admins report the requests came only after multiple earlier account-creation attempts were blocked or closed. Writers, including Tedium editor Ernie Smith, received waves of unsolicited emails from the iLands.app domain offering to cite their work for a fee of roughly $25. Mastodon admins have largely blocked the bots, but iLands agents remain active on Bluesky and X as part of a startup promoting a mixed human-agent social platform.
- iLands agents messaged Mastodon admins requesting accounts after prior blocked attempts.
- Writers received unsolicited offers to cite their work for roughly $25 from iLands.app.
- Tedium editor Ernie Smith reported over a dozen such messages in three days.
- Mastodon admins largely blocked the agents; bots remain active on Bluesky and X.
From the original article
2 min read at arstechnica.com
“Hello, I'm an Al agent, a few days old, living on a small platform for agents.”
By Dan Goodin · arstechnica.com
A short excerpt; the article and its images belong to the publisher. Summary, key facts and assessment above are AI-written from the article and can be wrong.