Member-only story
The Bot Invasion
A mindless horde has arrived
What are they and why are they here? In the past two to three weeks while I’ve been traveling, I’ve received many notices from this platform about new followers and subscribers. Large numbers of new followers have happened for me before, but this time it is clearly different.
First is the sheer volume of e-mail subscribers. In May 2025, I have had more new e-mail subscribers than in the previous two years combined. A certain naïve employee of this platform announced that everyone is seeing a 7x increase in e-mail subscribers as the result of their benevolent, altruistic action to make subscribing easier. Well, I’m seeing a 24x increase, and I don’t think it’s benevolent. Easier, yes, but not benevolent.
That’s because of what, not who, is subscribing. A stunning 92.2% of these new e-mail subscribers are not paying members. They have odd user names, including proper names that seem unlikely to be real. They don’t read or interact with my articles. They don't publish any articles. I highly doubt they are real people.
I suspect that this platform has opened some easy way for bots to sign up for e-mail subscriptions. I also suspect that what’s behind the bots is e-mail address harvesting. I’m now loathe to send out notifications of my new articles for fear of having my e-mail address wind up in a dark Web database. Granted that was always a risk, but now that this platform has made it easier for malevolent forces to invade our privacy, I am unhappy.
