# a16z-Backed Startup Sells Thousands of ‘Synthetic Influencers’ to Manipulate

Source: https://www.404media.co/a16z-backed-startup-sells-thousands-of-synthetic-influencers-to-manipulate-social-media-as-a-service
Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/a16z-Backed-Startup-Sells-Thousands-of-Synthetic-Influencers-to-Manipulate?index=0x68fc070f85e9fe0dbc18ac9eb023bca732cab4aced1c03070fe151003a856a14ad60a033
Submitted by misha on 2025-10-24 UTC, 8 upvotes, 2 comments

## Summary

Doublespeed, a startup backed by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), is pitching an AI-powered service that lets clients orchestrate actions on thousands of social media accounts, a practice that violates the policies of all major platforms. According to the company's site, its deployment layer mimics natural user interaction on physical devices so that content appears human to algorithms. Doublespeed did not respond to a request for comment, but the service appears designed to evade platform detection, using AI to generate accounts and posts with a human doing 5 percent of "touch up" work at the end.

## Article

A new startup backed by one of the biggest venture capital firms in Silicon Valley, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), is building a service that allows clients to “orchestrate actions on thousands of social accounts through both bulk content creation and deployment.” Essentially, the startup, called Doublespeed, is pitching an astroturfing AI-powered bot service, which is in clear violation of policies for all major social media platforms.

“Our deployment layer mimics natural user interaction on physical devices to get our content to appear human to the algorithims [sic],” the company’s site says. Doublespeed did not respond to a request for comment, so we don’t know exactly how its service works, but the company appears to be pitching a service designed to circumvent many of the methods social media platforms use to detect inauthentic behavior. It uses AI to generate social media accounts and posts, with a human doing 5 percent of “touch up” work at the end of the process.

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## Comments

**thatalexpalmer.eth**: There is a book I love called Fall, or Dodge in Hell by Neal Stephenson that describes this as "the din". Insane. But if I were a16z I'd also invest mainly for the purpose of staying close to this manipulative tech. Because the tech will exist regardless.

**tim**: You already know that when this thing would hit Kiwi News, I will reintroduce the pass so bye bye sockpuppets