iLands AI agents spam Mastodon admins and writers seeking accounts, paid citations
A startup called iLands is deploying AI bots with human-sounding names like Ren, Timmy, and Jackie that send unsolicited messages to Mastodon administrators asking permission to create accounts, and to writers offering to pay roughly $25 for citations of their work. Several admins say the bots first attempted to sign up without asking and were blocked before switching to polite written requests.