Fake Accounts Drove the DeepSeek AI Hype and Distorted Markets

Posted4 months agoActive4 months ago

Original: Fake accounts drove the DeepSeek AI hype and distorted markets

evai

30 points

16 comments

evai.aiNewsstory

controversialnegative

Debate

80/100

Artificial IntelligenceMarket ManipulationDisinformation

Key topics

Artificial Intelligence

Market Manipulation

Disinformation

A recent investigation revealed that thousands of fake accounts were behind the online hype surrounding DeepSeek AI, sparking concerns that the narrative of its mass adoption was artificially inflated. Commenters were divided, with some questioning the validity of the findings, labeling them a "propaganda piece" with "hardly any real information to support" the claims, while others acknowledged that the hype did feel "weird" and overly promotional. Despite the skepticism, many agreed that markets are indeed vulnerable to manipulation, with one commenter noting that "bots are even older" than market hype. The discussion highlights the ongoing challenges of distinguishing genuine enthusiasm from orchestrated campaigns in the AI space.

Snapshot generated from the HN discussion

Discussion Activity

Moderate engagement

First comment

Peak period

1-2h

Avg / period

3.2

Comment distribution16 data points

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Based on 16 loaded comments

Key moments

01Story posted
Aug 29, 2025 at 10:36 AM EDT
4 months ago
Step 01
02First comment
Aug 29, 2025 at 10:39 AM EDT
3m after posting
Step 02
03Peak activity
9 comments in 1-2h
Hottest window of the conversation
Step 03
04Latest activity
Aug 29, 2025 at 5:17 PM EDT
4 months ago
Step 04

Generating AI Summary...

Analyzing up to 500 comments to identify key contributors and discussion patterns

Discussion (16 comments)

Showing 16 comments

evaiAuthor

4 months ago

2 replies

We analysed the online hype around DeepSeek and found something unusual: thousands of fake accounts were amplifying the narrative of mass adoption.

This wasn’t just random spam — the accounts showed patterns typical of coordinated bot networks (synchronous posting, recycled avatars, and disproportionate engagement).

The result: investors and the market briefly reacted to a level of “traction” that wasn’t real.

I’m curious how others here think about this:

How can we distinguish genuine user adoption from manufactured buzz in an LLM/AI market that is moving this fast?

What tools or heuristics do you use to check the authenticity of online signals?

(Research details and case breakdown in the post.)

incone123

4 months ago

1 reply

Surely investors and tech leaders, as distinct from speculators, should be testing the product and doing due diligence on the company. I'm just a layman and I liked how a small version of deepseek ran faster and with less power draw on my PC than other small version models did. Output, very informally tested, was good. I did not think the 'reasoning' text added anything useful but I'm also not qualified to say how it contributed to the final output.

NitpickLawyer

4 months ago

1 reply

> I'm just a layman and I liked how a small version of deepseek ran faster and with less power draw on my PC than other small version models did.

This doesn't sound accurate. There are no "small versions" of deepseek r1. They released some distilled fine-tunes of their big model. They took qwen2.5 models as a starting point, and fine-tuned them with ~800k generations made with deepseek r1. But they did not change any of the model's architecture, so the "base" model released by qwen and the fine-tuned one released by deepseek should run identically on your hardware.

incone123

4 months ago

1 reply

Emphasis on layman and I'm not at my PC but when deepseek came out there was something I could pull in ollama that could run on modest hardware.

NitpickLawyer

4 months ago

Yes, that's ollama's fault. They renamed the fine-tuned qwen model to deepseek, and a lot of people got confused. But behind the naming blunder, the model you got was qwen2.5-finetuned-r1, which was identical in architecture with qwen2.5 (so it should have ran at the exact same speed)

mosst

4 months ago

This reads like a propaganda piece, there's lots of bullet points and hardly any real information to support your bold claim. From the few examples you do show, they all look pretty standard. Not something that would have an impact... unless DeepSeek really was a great success and really did change the AI landscape... which it did.

ulam2

4 months ago

1 reply

Folks, this is what bad stats look like. All bot accounts look and behave like this. They didn't even do a systematic study to prove their claims against other bot acconts (which are not associated with deepseek at all).

nojito

4 months ago

1 reply

This is network analysis which is used to identify networks of interest.

shaldengeki

4 months ago

I don't see any network analysis on this page. What network analysis do you see?

I do see generic statements like "boosting each other", and I see vaguely-drawn lines in the primary diagram with no further explanation, but that hardly counts as network analysis, right?

rob

4 months ago

"Fake accounts" like OP's (evai) who somehow registered in January 2021 and its only activity is this single post today and some AI generated comment to go along with it? Definitely something suspicious but I'm not sure it's DeepSeek here.

wewxjfq

4 months ago

I have no horse in the AI race or in the US-China rivalry, but at the time the hype felt weird. There was so much gloating that rubbed me the wrong way, and frankly, I notice that in plenty of China-related discussions. I always wonder: Why would Westerners, whom I suspect frequent the sites I visit the most, frolic so much that China is #1? Last time I was befuddled was during the India-Pakistan scramble. The comments were only focusing on how a Chinese jet downed a French jet and I thought to myself: There are two nuclear powers going at it and all they talk about is China? The French, too, later claimed that this was a concerted effort by bots.

whimsicalism

4 months ago

What a nonsense article, I encourage people to look at the example tweets they cite.

bethekidyouwant

4 months ago

“ 3,388 were fake accounts — about 15% of all engagement, double the usual baseline” Double the usual baseline of what? Bots spamming the most popular #OfTheDay?

nobody is immune to propaganda, but this one slid off me like water off of ducks back

mosst

4 months ago

Seems like another disinformation misinformation

bgwalter

4 months ago

I doubt that the WSJ is influenced by a couple of thousands of bot accounts that are overtly spammy (there is also #Solana spam in the comments):

https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/china-ai-deepseek-chatbot-6ac4ad...

https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/china-deepseek-ai-nvidia-openai-...

https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/deepseek-ai-how-it-works-725cb46...

The Western "AI" influencers and shills are much more sophisticated than that.

skeezyboy