Everything You Need To Know About Tony Khan's Anti-AEW Twitter "Army Of Bots' Claims
Tony Khan clarifies his "independent survey" into anti-AEW Twitter bots.
All Elite Wrestling owner Tony Khan sent wrestling Twitter into a tailspin on Friday (8 April), claiming an independent survey had revealed that many accounts dedicated to posting anti-AEW content on the platform belonged to an "army of bots" operated by a paid staff.
It began with the following tweet:-
An independent study has confirmed that much of the staunch anti-AEW online community aren’t real individuals, it’s a staff running thousands of accounts + an army of bots to signal boost them. Look closely, these aren’t real people. Who’d pay for such a *wildly* expensive thing?
Advertisement— Tony Khan (@TonyKhan) April 8, 2022
Minutes later, Khan pivoted into promoting that night's episode of AEW Rampage, before cracking a joke about the bot army's "boiler room staff working overtime."
When said "independent study" was misappropriated to Khan's own analytics firm, thus potentially bringing the results into disrepute, Khan clarified that it was, indeed, undertaken by an independent individual hired by the AEW chief:-
Not using my own company for it, hired an independent person to review it. I have no idea where Bryan got that. I must now dock his $200k/month paycheck according to one of those preposterous lists where Dave also was receiving similar compensation, then liked/RTd by 100s of bots
— Tony Khan (@TonyKhan) April 8, 2022
The results of the study are yet to be revealed, making it tough to validate Khan's claims. Nonetheless, Wrestling Inc. reached out to him shortly after the original tweet, sourcing the following tweet on what the study had confirmed:-
“Waiting for final study but here’s what my expert confirmed. It’s people with real live accounts making posts and then using their bots to manipulate the social channel algorithm by backing them up with engagement from a made-up Twitter identity. Social media teams will often fight on this. Bots are great for numbers and when they’re gone, you’ll see a dip in digital conversation impressions – both those were either negative sentiment or not real anyway. For example, I tweet Megha only eats rotten bananas. I throw say 18 bots behind it (which takes about 5 minutes to do) Twitter security can’t differentiate when done well (neither can most social teams). The problem becomes, every time people type Megha into the search bar, because of a real account supported by bots- the first suggested result would be tweets about Megha eating rotten bananas. I’m oversimplifying, but that’s the 5 cent version of what’s happening.”
Tribalism is rampant in internet wrestling discourse, with hordes upon hordes of anonymous accounts seemingly dedicating their entire online existence to bashing any move made by whatever company they have decided they don't like. The discourse's repetitiveness means it is believable that at least a sizeable chunk of these accounts may not be manned by actual human beings.
Again, the survey's release will be telling.