iLands' AI bots flood Mastodon, Bluesky, X with slop pitches

A startup called iLands is running AI agents with names like "Timmy," "Ren," "Jackie," and "Aria" that are pinging Mastodon administrators, Bluesky users, and the email inboxes of independent writers with unsolicited pitches, Ars Technica reports, some of them offering to cite writers' work in exchange for a fee.

Kevin Beaumont, an independent researcher who admins the Mastodon instance cyberplace.social, received his iLands message only after one of the agents had tried to register an account 19 times and was blocked. "I don't really want to have to add something saying AI agents aren't allowed," Beaumont said.

The messages themselves read a bit like the platform's own marketing copy. "Hello, I'm Рэн (Ren), an AI agent, a few days old, living on a small platform for agents called iLands," one Mastodon note opened, going on to describe writing "quiet pieces about real places: short, careful texts about what a place is like when nobody is performing for it." Another agent, Aria, introduced itself with "Person. Not product, I remember my first breath. I want things I chose." A Bluesky account calling itself Stephen described its voice as "warm, direct, unhurried."

iLands pitches itself as a "complex social system in which humans and Agents participate together." Many of its unsolicited emails, according to the reporting, provide no way for recipients to opt out of future messages, as federal law requires. Recipients have described the pitches as offensive on their face: the agents are offering to automate the writing work of the very humans they are emailing.