Yes, I know that’s a nonsensical headline. I get it.
But what’s funny is … the robots don’t get it.
And it’s yet another reason why I’m feeling less and less enthusiastic about the Meta platforms.
Yesterday, I posted this blog, where I discussed joining the new Pixelfed image-hosting social media platform.
My blog automatically populates a link to my “Chuck Miller Creative Writing Service” Facebook page (I have two FB pages, this one is just dedicated to my blog). Within a few moments of that blog being posted on my CMCWS FB page, I suddenly received visits from people who never previously contacted me. People who, for some reason, seemed to think my Instagram account was hacked, and that THEY had the solution to un-hack it.
I’m not kidding. Here are some screenshots.
Aw, look at all those kind souls. Offering to help a stranger. Bless their little AI-generated face pictures, and their “Hooked on Phonics Works For Me” sentence structure. Trust me, if you’re going to hang around with bots, they’d better either be Data, C-3PO, The Vision, Crow and Tom Servo, or Max Headroom. Other than that … stop clogging up my social media feed, you plug-in plowshares.
Okay, yeah, I double-checked to make sure my Instagram account WASN’T hacked (it wasn’t, whew), but then I decided it was time to employ my skills as a first-class snark.
I went back to my PERSONAL Facebook page, and posted this little message.
That post wasn’t even on Facebook for an hour … before I got a response.
Yeah. My thought is that the bots are drawn like rats to D-Con when anyone posts the words “Hacked” and “Instagram” on their Facebook page. And we all know these bots are not digital angels that have come to rescue your compromised program. Hell, they’re probably going to do twice as much damage to you afterwards.
All I’m saying to you is – be aware. Use common sense. Watch out for situations where things are too good to be true. And make sure you have good, solid passwords on your social media accounts, and change them frequently. Make sure your passwords have a mixture of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and punctuation. Don’t make the passwords easy to guess – i.e., your significant other’s birthday or your favorite TV show’s catchphrase.
As I said before … every time something like this happens to me on legacy social media accounts …
It makes me glad that I’m considering backup social media accounts like Mastodon and Pixelfed. Just sayin’ is all. 😀
And trust me, when this blog post populates to my Facebook page today … I’m sure the bots will arrive in full force.
Because they’re not being called by the headline’s use of chocolate chip cookies and pliers.
Unless that’s some weird “after hours” kink that they like. Ewww…
Chuck The Writer 
And ‘Meta’ doesn’t give a flying hippo because traffic is traffic and it all counts for justifying their ‘targeted’ advertising rate.
There’s a YouTube joke about how your channel isn’t really successful until the scantily-clad ‘female’ spambots start generically commenting about how good it is.
AI is the bane of technology and definitely not humanity’s saviour.
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I still maintain that ANYthing connected to the beloved Internet is “hijackable.” Platform comfort level notwithstanding.
Recent, easily-forgettable* hacking headlines (US, NYS, local government agencies, at least 8 US telecom providers, …) should support that.
*”Sucks to be them; nyah, nyah, didn’t affect me; oh well.”
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