A truly fascinating study published by Cyabra reveals that almost half of the responses to official PlayStation channels highlighting the August blackout campaign were “inauthentic” – or, in other words, fake.
In the wake of its decision to stop manufacturing physical games in 2028, fans mobilized to launch a boycott in late August, urging gamers to disconnect their consoles and stay offline.
The idea was to reduce Sony’s number of monthly active users and spending within the PlayStation ecosystem, thus hitting the company where it hurts.
However, data from the US revealed that there was no real impact on the company’s engagement metrics, and while we’re still waiting for PlayStation’s financial report to fully verify this, this fascinating new research has emerged.
Cyabra released its findings in September, but I’ve only just seen this information reported across the internet at large.
In its research, the company claims it was able to identify nearly 1,000 fake profiles that added to the “noise” and spammed official PlayStation accounts with automated posts.
These fake profiles generated over a million views and were shared over 100,000 times. Misspelled variants, like #NoDiskNoBuy, were amplified nearly 90% by bots, the study found.
It’s not all bad for protesters, however: Cyabara notes that the messages that garner the most engagement come from real, authentic posters. It states that “28% of key posts (on the topic) came from accounts with fewer than 5,000 followers”, and simply went viral by reflecting the mood of players.
If you look at any PlayStation post from the last couple of months, you’ll see people mentioning physical games in the replies, but the sentiment is fading and bot accounts now attract much less engagement.
It’s interesting to watch this new era of “social media warfare” unfold, though, and it’s hardly surprising to see the blackout seem to stumble if it were significantly amplified by fake accounts.
I think it’s important to point out that none of this research says there aren’t people deeply unhappy with Sony’s decision – it’s just fascinating to see how much of the conversation is being driven by robots.
Gn tech
