Objective
Doublespeed is a startup backed by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) that uses a phone farm to manage at least hundreds of AI-generated social media accounts and promote products
Doublespeed uses generative AI to flood social media with accounts and posts to promote certain products on behalf of its clients. Social media companies attempt to detect and remove this type of astroturfing for violating their inauthentic behavior policies, which is why Doublespeed uses a bank of phones to emulate the behavior of real users. So-called “click farms” or “phone farms” often use hundreds of mobile phones to fake online engagement of reviews for the same reason.
Doublespeed has said it has the ability to and soon plans to launch its services on Instagram, Reddit, and X, but so far seems to only be operating on TikTok.
Marc Andreessen, after whom half of Andreessen Horowitz is named, sits on Meta’s board of directors. Doublespeed’s business would clearly violate Meta’s policy on “authentic identity representation.