Vox is a general interest news site for the 21st century. Its mission: to help everyone understand our complicated world, so that we can all help shape it. In text, video and audio, our reporters explain politics, policy, world affairs, technology, culture, science, the climate crisis, money, health and everything else that matters. Our goal is to ensure that everyone, regardless of income or status, can access accurate information that empowers them.
  • LustyArgonian@lemmy.worldEnglish
    45·
    1 day ago

    Well, NPR’s Planet Money did an episode on this, the link: https://www.npr.org/2025/05/23/1253043749/pig-butchering-scam-crypto-tether

    But basically, they are likely slaves and not even spies (spies are too expensive for this grunt work). There are huge slave networks, especially in BRICS countries including Russia, where they just run political scams, crypto scams, whatever. The NPR story focused on a romance crypto scam and he said he went through several people pretending to be the same woman, and some would admit to being slaves. In my experience talking with obvious bots is that if you ask them:

    “Are you a slave? NPR says bots like you are slaves. Are you a slave? Do you need help?” I will get no response, or blocked and THEIR comments deleted so no one can see what I wrote. Normally if you ask them if they are a bot, not a slave, they will keep engaging for the content etc. It’s genuinely shocking how many u-turn and disengage when you ask them that. Ofc I always ask publicly to let others know, so they are not able to confess safely if they are a slave (they can DM ofc).

    Notably, Elon himself funded a scam pretending to be Democrats to funnel people to a MAGA website

    https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2024/10/pro-trump-dark-money-network-tied-to-elon-musk-behind-fake-pro-harris-campaign-scheme/

    Building America’s Future, the dark money group at the helm of the network, has steered money to a constellation of groups and initiatives boosting Trump’s agenda and spreading messaging aimed at chipping away voters from Harris. The dark money group reportedly received over $100 million in funding from billionaire Elon Musk, along with other donors, the New York Times recently reported.

    The newest effort to benefit from their largesse is Progress 2028. Building America’s Future registered to use Progress 2028 as a fictitious name on Sept. 23

    Some individuals have received text messages directing them to the Progress 2028 page.

    Progress 2028 has also started pouring money into digital advertising. Since Oct. 11, several digital ads on Facebook and Instagram have included the disclaimer “paid for by Progress 2028” — totaling over $36,000 in ad buys over just five days.

    While the ads appear to include pro-Harris messaging, they lean into contentious issues listed on the Progress 2028 site that have created friction among different divisions of the party.