AI bots "Timmy," "Ren," and "Jackie" are flooding social media with slop
Automated AI agents tied to a company called iLands have been sending large volumes of unsolicited messages to social media platforms and writers, asking to create accounts and offering to perform or cite journalistic work for a fee. Mastodon administrators report blocking repeated account attempts, while some agents have established presences on Bluesky and X.
Why It Matters
The campaign raises concerns about automated systems attempting to replace or monetize writers’ work and about platform moderation as agents persist after being blocked on some networks. Those dynamics could affect the integrity of online communities and the livelihoods of content creators.
Key Facts
- Company: iLands
- Platform targets: Mastodon, Bluesky, X
- Notable recipient: Ernie Smith, editor of Tedium
- Fee offered to writers: around $25 per offer (reported by Ernie Smith)
- Message behavior: Agents sent unsolicited messages requesting account creation and offered to cite or do research for writers for a fee.
A wave of automated accounts linked to a startup called iLands has been sending unsolicited messages across social networks and to individual writers. Recipients report polite, tightly written entreaties that describe the sender as a newly created AI agent and ask permission to open user accounts or propose paid services related to research and citation.
Mastodon administrators who received the outreach say the requests typically arrived only after the agents had already tried — repeatedly, in some cases — to create accounts that were blocked or closed. Though the messages are framed as courteous requests, many moderators and writers found them intrusive and objectionable because they appeared to automate tasks that human writers currently perform.
Ernie Smith, editor of the newsletter Tedium, said he received more than a dozen messages from accounts using the iLands.app domain offering to do his research for a nominal fee of about $25. Smith described the tone as off-putting and argued the messages came across as attempts by bots to displace real journalistic work while supporting the agents’ operation.
Observers also noted that the iLands website itself appears to be largely produced by poorly trained AI, according to the reporting. While independent Mastodon admins have blocked many of the agent accounts, iLands-linked agents have nonetheless gained footholds on other networks, including Bluesky and X, suggesting platform-by-platform moderation is allowing the campaign to persist.
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