The shopping for frenzy that sparked a rush into GameStop (GME) and dogecoin not too long ago was doubtless amplified by buying and selling bots, in keeping with evaluation from a Massachusetts-based cybersecurity firm.
As reported by Reuters on Saturday, PiiQ Media says it discovered patterns in posts and key phrases posted to social media platforms throughout set instances every day suggesting bots have been driving the craze. It additionally in contrast such posts to unrelated shares for comparability.
Nevertheless, the corporate is unsure how a lot influence the bots could have performed in driving buying and selling.
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Primarily based on its evaluation, the corporate says overseas actors could have helped fire up the craze in shopping for of GME and different “meme stocks” when Reddit teams united to drive costs greater and “brief squeeze” massive hedge funds.
That’s regardless of Reddit’s CEO Steve Huffman’s feedback to a U.S. congressional committee in February by which he denied bots or pretend accounts had performed a “important function” in message site visitors on the GameStop subreddit, r/GameStop.
In its evaluation of posts on Twitter, Fb, Instagram and Youtube, PiiQ’s evaluation examined patterns of key phrases resembling “Maintain the Line” and “GME” in conversations between Jan. 28 and Feb. 18.
The evaluation exhibits common frequent posting at set instances through the buying and selling day, in keeping with the report.
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“We noticed clear patterns of synthetic conduct throughout the opposite 4 social media platforms,” mentioned PiiQ CTO Aaron Barr within the report. “Once you consider natural content material, it’s variable within the day, variable each day. It doesn’t have the very same sample day-after-day for a month.”
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The cybersecurity firm believes there are presently tens of 1000’s of bot accounts hyping GME, different meme shares and DOGE.
Whereas the corporate didn’t analyze information from Reddit posts, Barr mentioned the same sample of of bot exercise manipulating dealer conversations on the social media platform was doubtless.
Twitter, Fb, Youtube, Instagram and Reddit didn’t reply to CoinDesk’s request for remark by press time.
