> an a16z-funded startup that uses a phone farm to flood social media with AI-generated TikTok accounts

Isn't this a bot farm? Don't they already exist and aren't they against TikTok's terms of service? The most surprising part of this article is that a16z invested in this.

also their website is unsettling https://doublespeed.ai/

Having looked at https://doublespeed.ai/ out of morbid curiosity, I have to say a simple screenshot would have sent the message more effectively. Well, that and the tagline "a16z funded this".

Anyone working for a company like that should be deeply ashamed of themselves.

I can't be the only one who thought this was a phone farm based on iPhones running Apple A16Z SoC (which doesn't exist btw, it's A12Z or A16)

Did anyone else skim a few paragraphs before the VC context clicked? Curious whether a16z considered the chip naming collision when they picked that numeronym.

There are at least two of us

> calling them the 'antichrist'

I'm not an expert on the antichrist, but I think they are at least better candidates than Greta Thunberg.

Imagine investing your hard earned money into a phone farm that spams AI content in order to manipulate people into buying shit they don’t need, while our world burns.

See, there's your problem, introspection.

https://youtube.com/shorts/b6Zw50f5jJk

The link is playful, but there's real literature on this. Introspection failure — not knowing what's actually driving your choices — is pretty well-documented in psychology.

Phone farms existed long before AI. People have been selling snake oil via manipulative advertising since forever. Why does this particular iteration deserve such moral outrage?

I dropped this into a previous chat about the introspection bit.

New Media Playbook https://a16z.simplecast.com/episodes/a16zs-new-media-playboo...

I still think it’s quite shocking.

I did some volunteer work with a non-profit conducting a survey in NYC about “food deserts”. I had to complete an hours long certification course—ethical boundaries and such—just so I can speak with people about fruits and vegetables. This audio makes it clear a16z’s rigorous approach to communication is coming from a dark and dangerous place.

This “playbook” speaks about _intentionally creating_ mental breakdown. Seems like an antichrist move to me.

* Andreessen Horowitz - scammers.

* Y Combinator - vibe coders.

Are there any respectable VC tech companies out there in 2026?

"Respectable VC" is an oxymoron.

We made an exception for Benchmark once. Regretted it. Some firms are less predatory than others, but yeah, "respectable VC" is basically asking for honest advertising.

Help me understand. Is this just AI replacing influencers?

More like a tiktok spam botnet for hire.

Are 404 media links still blackholed?

Only if the articles have a pay-wall and no way to bypass it.

This article in particular doesn’t have one. So it should be fine.

Wow, this doublespeed company is abhorrent stuff. AI social media accounts masquerading as real people, coordinating to promote and distribute anything on demand.

If this is the kind of thing you can do in the open as a "reputable" company with VC investment, I can only imagine the kind of horrific industrial-scale social media spam+slop botnets for hire that exist less publicly.

How can I contribute to such endeavours?

And still Wikipedia calls the dead internet a ‘conspiracy theory’

Doublespeed looks like cancer. Never heard about them or "a16z" before, but looks like the pinnacle of slop

a16z is a pretty big VC firm, popular among the ycombo startup crowd

SaaS = Slop as a Service. I heard SaaS is all the rage with VC money these days.

Ran a smaller device farm for app testing. The orchestration software almost always runs as root, nobody ever changes default creds on the ADB server. This hack sounds trivial.