May 11, 2019

Understanding the importance of Google+ autoposter


On the first look a Google+ autoposter is a typical example for a spam bot. If the tool is used, the admin of the Google+ group will delete the spam post, because he is doing the same what the admin of forum will do. Right? No, he won't. It is important to know, that a social network is different from a forum. Using an autoposting tool for flooding a forum doesn't make much sense. The first message which is send with the tool, gets flagged as spam and after posting the second message the admin will ban the entire user account.
I didn't found a single video on youtube in which it was explained how to use autoposting software for flooding Stackoverflow or Wikipedia. Because such behavior wouldn't make much sense.
The only way an autoposter can be used meaningful is against social networks. The amount of tutorials is endless and the tools are used widespread. The funny thing is, that the average autoposter gets never banned of a Google+ group. In contrast, he is the backbone of a group. Social networks without autoposter wouldn't work.
To understand this phenomena we have to go into the details. What the average autoposter is doing is the following. At first the user behind the bot is creating manual a list of carefully selected URL. They have to fit to the group and they have to announce new content in a blogging network. This list is used by the autoposter to create a new post in a Google+ group.
Now we scale the principle up. Not a single user, but 3 different users are using an autoposter. The result is, that each day in the forum 3 new postings are visible with links to external websites. If a user is subscribed to the group he will see in the timeline relevant news. He can read, that in his community new content is available from different blogs and if he likes he can press the link.
What i want to tell is, that autoposter are providing a value. A certain group is subscribed by the reader because each day the autoposters are active. The best example from outside Google+ is the Planet wikimedia newsstream https://en.planet.wikimedia.org/ It can be compared to a feed which was generated by an autoposter. The interesting point is, that the amount of subscribers of this stream is high, because the stream aggregates information from different blogs of the Mediawiki ecosystem.
The same service is provided by Google+ autoposters, the only difference is, that more than a single autoposter is active in the group and additionally the user can upvote certain posts. That means a Google+ group which is filled with autoposting technology is more advanced than the Planet wikimedia stream.
Advantages and disadvantages
Using an autoposter against a forum is always a fail. The stackoverflow admin will recognize the bot fast and ban the user. Even if the autoposter is configured differently, it is not possible to post something with the tool to a forum. Even the most advanced autoposter which is posting slowly and is able to produce longer text with a neural network will be recognized in a forum as a spam post and gets deleted fast.
In contrast, an autoposter for a Google+ group is in general a great idea. What can be made wrong in reality are the details. That means, if the autoposter is configured in a way that he will produce 1000 messages a day, this will result into trouble. Not because of autoposting in general, but only because of detail problem. A second possible misconception is to post URL with catphotos to a group which is called Linux. This will also result into a misunderstanding. But, if the autoposter was configured the right way and was filled with the right URL playlist the tool is generating meaningful postings. That means, human users will click the upvote button and sometimes the amount of subscribers will gets higher.