Boost, spambots are annoying

Everyone hates spam especially when it is used to manipulate conversations. In the past few days, we noticed an increase in tweets and comments promoting Boost eWallet. While organic conversations are great, there’s something weird about these comments and where it came from.

Twitter spam

It all started when we noticed a spike of replies to a tweet that was made in September. Since we were mentioned in the tweet, we kept on receiving notifications and all of them have a common pattern — Boost is good. And you can win an iPhone 11. Although there’s no way to 100% confirm that these comments came from Boost, the intention speaks for itself.

When we performed a quick search for latest tweets containing iPhone 11 and Boost, we found dozens of replies containing the same messages. Except for a couple of tweets made from established accounts, most of them are tweeted from an account that has single-digit followers.

The spam appears to be automated and it targets tweets with mentions of iPhone 11. There are also a couple of replies promoting Boost for participating partners such as Shopee, GSC and Aquaria.

What’s even worse is that some replies are made to hijack its competitors like this tweet on Touch ‘n Go eWallet. If you look at the replies, there’s a “conversation” taking place by the same group of accounts that have almost no followers.

We also noticed the same thing for other eWallets such as Maybank MAE. This tweet by @liveatpcdotcom was made in mid-October and suddenly it received 9 replies two weeks later.

Spam in the comments

That’s not all, the same activities were also found in the comments section on our site. Since their intention was to hijack iPhone 11-related content, you can see similar comments on our iPhone 11 unboxing post. The post itself was published a month ago but we received a total of 5 new comments in the past 24 hours.

If you clicked on the individual profile, you would notice that they have been doing the same thing on other websites. What’s appalling is that some of these accounts were also used to hijack/badmouth other competitors as shown below.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen such tactics in our social feed and comments section, and we’ve been constantly flagging and banning accounts that are obviously used for ads. We hope brands realise that this method of advertising is unethical and it has to stop.

If you do notice spam activities, you can always help out by reporting them on the respective platform. To report spam on Twitter, just tap on the down arrow of the tweet > select Report Tweet > select Uses the reply function to spam.