AOL Has Decided I Don't Have Enough Robotic Friends
from the why-are-you-here? dept
AOL recognizes that a lot of people only touch the company's services through AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), and has worked hard to try to squeeze money out of that usage in the way of increasingly intrusive ads. It looks like someone at AOL has figured that if they're already bombarding you with ads around the IM window, why not put them directly in your buddy list? Like plenty of others, when I logged into AIM this morning, I was told that the company decided I was too lonely and added two AIM bots that I certainly didn't request and really didn't want in my buddy list. They put them up top, too, in case I missed them. To be just that much more insulting, they added a little "don't worry, you can just delete them if you don't want them." Seems a bit like buddy list spam, actually. "You can just hit delete if you don't want this spam." Instant messaging bots are nothing new, of course. They've been around for years -- and for years I've never really seen the point. Why would I suddenly want them in my buddy list if I've never requested them myself?Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Premium-rate SMS services use bots
"Regular users of pornographic SMS chat may be shocked to find out that they are swapping dirty talk with machines rather than young women and men.
But it's a fair bet that they are because the Natachata chatbot, written by former rocket scientist Simon Luttrell, is so widely used by porn chat merchants. At its busiest Natachata handles 15 messages per second. A typical "session" lasts about seven or eight messages and each SMS costs more than £1." More (BBC)
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I hope it stays that way.
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AIM bots
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No Subject Given
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powered down
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No Subject Given
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removed
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AIM Bots
I don't allow IMs from anyone NOT on already my contact list.
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Fun with bots
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Sooo-ny?
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No Subject Given
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tracking clients?
Anyone thought of that??
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