![Bot & Sold on Twitter (RE: Article from @FastCompany)]()
A couple of times over the last few years a photo of me has been used as a Twitter bot. I didn’t think much of it. I figured there was nothing I can do other than report for spam. To be honest, my first thought was “you’ve made it” then it happened over a handful of times and it was kinda unsettling. Have I been targeted? What is going on here and why does this keep happening? Yesterday, Keri sent me this article from FastCompany “Who’s That Woman In The Twitter Bot Profile? by Jason Feifer. I got a couple Tweets about it too. @casiestewart remember how there was a twitter bot of your Sunshine girl pic? Seems like you weren’t the only one! bit.ly/P2cemr — Breanna Hughes (@unbrelievable) August 9, 2012 They’re sometimes called “bimbots”–the army of Twitter bots with pretty profile pictures. Who are the women pictured in those photos? This is the story of the quest to find out.” Omg, it’s a thing. I read on… “After dozens of searches, a pattern emerged: Most bot photos had a long digital tail, having been posted on dozens of sketchy porn sites or blogs devoted to the barely legal. Occasionally, I’d be able to track a photo back to what seemed like an original source–like when a bot’s photo showed up alongside many others of the same woman, all posted to the fratboy site Barstool Sports. The site claimed her name is Aurora. But when I reached out, as was always the case, nobody cared to explain where the photos came from. …I tracked two bots back to the 2009 SUNshine Girls calendar, a lingerie showcase produced by the Toronto Sun. (I guess newspapers have to make money somehow.) The calendar only offered the models’ first names, and the paper’s photo…
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