WE’RE GOING ON A BOT HUNT! Join us for the chance to win $5000

Since Linda Reynolds’ defamation case began, a bot storm has been unleashed on Twitter (OK, OK, “X”) of spookily similarly worded tweets of sympathy and support for Reynolds, all from new accounts with nonsensical bios and a handful of followers (see Exhibits A and B sourced from @EmergencyBK’s Twitter account).  These accounts apparently include chicken shop owners in Leningrad, professional basketballers in Wyoming and makija stylizacja paznocki artists from Louisiana, individuals who, unless Linda Reynolds’ international profile has grown markedly while we weren’t paying attention, seem unlikely to be closely following an ill-judged defamation action in Perth, Western Australia.

Who is behind them?  

The Shot is offering $5000 for a tech-savvy reader who can incontrovertibly prove the individual or organisation that is behind these bots.  Tell us who is coordinating and paying for them and you could win a cash prize of $5000 paid for from the Shot’s Blind Trust.  Bonus points (but no extra cash) if you can uncover if they also have links to the troll bots who send constant abuse to Brittany Higgins.  And no, on this occasion we don’t mean Janet Albrechtsen but rather the bot farms behind the virulent online harassment of Brittany and her family.

Send your discoveries to [email protected] by COB on September 6.  The prize will be awarded at the absolute discretion of our Technical Consultant judges to a reader who, in their expert opinions, provides the best hard, meaningful and verifiable evidence of the campaigners’ true identities. Note that the judges’ decision is final and the prize may not be awarded if it is deemed there is insufficient evidence to support claims or that the campaigners’ final identity remains too obscure.  We want to know specifics with – if not quite Anthony Klan-investigation-into-Advance level detail – enough verifiable information that we can publish.  Discovering only it’s an Eastern Australian Agriculture-style company wholly owned by a Cayman Islands-based Eastern Australian Irrigation-style company but without any information about the ultimate owners won’t cut it, for example.  If one or more entrants provide the same (correct) information, the winner will be selected at the absolute discretion of the judges using criteria that may include the order in which the entries were received, the level of detail provided about both the identities and how the information about the identities was sourced, and how rigorously the information can be verified.  Selecting more than one winner and dividing the prize money equally between two or more parties is also an option for our judges.

We are happy to keep the identity of all entrants confidential, including the ultimate winner if requested, but do require genuine names and contact details to be submitted with entries.

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B: