Feb 8
Cryptoland on the spotlight
“There is no such thing as bad publicity”
The idea of a crypto island is exotic enough to capture everyone’s attention, even of those who hate crypto.
Cryptoland has been public for a few months, growing steadily, but all of a sudden, on Jan 4th 2022, a suspicious wave of online harassers started bullying Cryptoland, its community and its team.
Why, what happen?
Nothing really.
This sounds hard to believe, so we decided to investigate this deeply, and here are the findings.
It all started on twitter when several dubious accounts began commenting on Cryptoland’s feed mocking the animation video and accusing us of being scammers and worse.
Many being suspicious accounts like these:
https://twitter.com/lufeedtoons
https://twitter.com/_ourladytamara
As we will demonstrate later in the article, those are mostly fake accounts, but where is this bullying coming from and why?
The harassment originated with this thread:
The threat is a bit hateful to say the least, with what even sounds like some death wishes:
*We don’t wish her to die though; our only wish would be for her to spread kindness instead and use her time on earth to do something beautiful with her energy.
The attacks continued and then someone set this “trap” comment:
As we can promptly see in retrospect, this is one of the many accounts involved in creating FUD around Cryptoland.
Before even getting any further, note that this account does not have personal profile picture nor a name. As you can already see, this is a red flag account by any standards.
Generally speaking, we tend to respond to most comments because we love to engage with the community. Our twitter is managed by several people in the team, but all non-native english speakers.
In most of the languages that derive from latin, consent “consentire”, is used frequently in many contexts.
One open discussion we’ve had in Cryptoland is wether the resort should be adults only, like many private island resorts do.
As we previously said we are non-native english speakers and can sometimes confuse meanings and make syntax errors. With that comment, the question was misunderstood and thought to be referring to the minimum age required to visit Cryptoland. Since it has not been decided yet wether Cryptoland will be an adults only resort; therefore, the indeterminate response.
In light of the fact that this was an obvious misinterpretation; once we realised the true signification of that ill-intentioned question, we proceeded to delete the tweet.
From here, they got exactly what they wanted: something to amplify the negative narrative they wanted to create around the project, so they did.
Let’s have a look at some of the other relevant accounts involved:
Linking to tweet from “Crypto Bros Taking Ls” account:
Reviewing most recent 3.2K tweets from Lil Head Ass “EBAY” (aka @widesauce):
- 26 out of 30 most liked tweets from widesauce are attacks directed at Cryptoland
- Excluding those 26 tweets, widesauce has averaged 4 likes per tweet (the 26 tweets above directed at Cryptoland averaged 2,693 likes)
- Ratio of retweets vs. likes is suspiciously low for most highlighted tweets (take the second one listed above, for example, with just 23 retweets.. and a whopping 5,548 likes)
- Engagement on widesauce’s tweets are being driven by inauthentic accounts
- Only 40 out of account’s most recent 3.2K tweets have resulted in at least 50 likes (more than half, 26, are from tweets directed at Cryptoland)
- 80 out of account’s most recent 3.2K tweets have resulted in at least 20 likes
- 213 of account’s most recent 3.2K tweets have resulted in at least 10 likes
- In other words, the engagement received by widesauce’s tweets directed at Cryptoland are atypical when compared to the account’s tweets historically
CoinersTakingLs
338K Followers since being created in May 2021 and after tweeting just 569 times:
Insane levels of engagement on this tweet (driven by artificial amplification; and via reply. The account links to thread from widesauce):
CoinersTakingLs follows just 52 accounts, one of them being web3isgreat, an account created by Molly White:
We provided a clear explanation of the misunderstanding, not many seemed to care though, they continued with their defamation narrative for weeks, even after we addressed the issue several times.
Hyperactive Activity Contributing Accounts
PunishedKamui
130+ likes per day since account was created, a clear example of non human, bot-like behaviour.
Shitposting cryptoland below:
RadLegalTakes
100+ likes per day since account was created:
Propagating conspiracies about Cryptoland:
Spreading false accusations about the team:
Or even worse, death wishes:
- Most of our team members got also attacked on linked in and via email causing them anxiety, stress, and fear. So we will protect their privacy going forward.
SOCIAL NETWORK ANALYSIS
To get a better sense of the abnormal engagement those fake accounts create, we have rendered a node map that gives a big picture view.
Map Graphics
12,264 tweets (4,367 unique accounts represented), data from Jan 2nd (7:34p UTC) to Jan 11th (7:07am UTC)
Verified accounts (92 out of 4,367) are green below; unverified accounts are red
Recently created accounts (created less than 12 months ago), 1,231 accounts:
Hyperactive liking (averaging 100+ likes per day since account creation), 305 accounts:
*Little side note. When you come across inauthentic accounts, take the time to report them.
CONCLUSIONS
This analysis shows clear evidence of a directed bullying campaign driven by amplified artificial engagement, but it’s also important to mention that it was then followed by some organic participation as well.
Public statements like this made no difference:
This didn’t seem to interest the mainstream media either. A crypto island story is so irresistible that Cryptoland was covered by some of the biggest online newspapers in the world.
Who is behind the origins of this and why, is something that will be an ongoing investigation; what we know already is that many of those accounts are anti-crypto and regularly engage in degrading practices:
These humiliation attempts are not only being directed at Cryptoland as we can see here but also, they are common on many crypto projects of a certain size.
Cryptoland is made by crypto enthusiasts for crypto enthusiasts, shouldn’t surprise anyone that an unconventional project like this makes some nocoiners feel a bit uncomfortable, but Cryptoland is unstoppable.
This episode further validates the urgent need for a place for like-minded crypto advocates to get together away from the bullying of narrow-minded aggressors and we will do so peacefully. We will not engage in any online warfare, because it’s not in our ethos.
With love,
