Who is paying for the pro-Tether propaganda on X?

Since at least February 5, a flood of accounts have been relentlessly tweeting about one topic: a collaboration between the Department of Justice (DoJ) and Tether.

It’s impossible to say for certain who’s put forward the money to buy a slew of blue check accounts on X (formerly Twitter) to post about the “great teamwork” between Tether and the US government. However, one would be inclined to believe it’s a PR company or Tether itself who have determined that a concerted public relations push is worth the time and effort.

Unfortunately, there’s no news from the DoJ or Tether about any collaboration or partnership. The last press release from the DoJ explicitly mentioning Tether is from November of last year. In the release, which concerned a so-called ‘pig butchering’ scam, the DoJ stated, “The department would like to acknowledge Tether for its assistance in effectuating the transfer of these assets.”

When a Google search is done for one of the main phrases repeatedly tweeted out — ‘Kudos to the DoJ and Tether’ — a LinkedIn post from one Erin West comes up. West is a district attorney for Santa Clara County who has previously been profiled by DLNews as being one of the few US prosecutors going after pig butchering scammers.

Read more: Tether: Ten years, 100,000,000,000 USDT, and still no audit

AI-generated bot farms tweak posts about Tether

While artificial intelligence will likely change the future profoundly, it’s also changing the world we live in today, albeit in slightly annoying ways. Examples include allowing bot farms on X to marginally change posts so they don’t appear to be spam. The current round of posts about the DoJ and Tether almost always consist of a phrase resembling ‘Kudos to the DoJ and Tether for teaming up to combat romance scammers, a much-needed effort!’

Just some of the DoJ and Tether-related posts currently littering X.

Read more: Tether rarely minded law enforcement, now it suddenly does

The funniest tweets resemble AI-generated poems about Tether, such as “the collaboration between the DoJ and Tether [is like a] symbiotic dance between flowers and pollinators,” and “rustling leaves evoke tranquility; the Tether and DoJ teamwork restores peace.”

These tweets would be far funnier if it wasn’t clear that a paid actor was promoting them on X, that a bot farm or PR firm is utilizing AI to cheapen the cost of spam, and if some of them didn’t sound like almost-normal people. Unfortunately, they do and Elon Musk’s platform is doing nothing to stop it.

Regardless, the strongest argument in favor of Tether not being behind the current pro-Tether-DoJ-collaboration tweets is simply that there’s no news related to the DoJ or Tether and there hasn’t been for a significant amount of time. There would be no good reason for the controversial stablecoin to draw attention to its ongoing difficulties or partnerships with law enforcement.

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