John Paul M. Joaquin Culture 07.19.2022 08:Jul AM EDT

Online Bots, Fake Accounts Blamed for Justice League ‘Snyder Cut’ Demand, Report Says

Justice League 2017's "Snyder Cut" was noted by critics and fans alike to be significantly better than the original version released in theaters worldwide, per Deen of Geek.

However, demand for it seems to be artificially increased to pressure Warner Bros. to release the Snyder Cut of the film.

For better or worse, bots may have been a contributing factor to Zack Snyder's Justice League being redeemed in the eyes of the public.

An investigation commissioned by WarnerMedia stated that a handful of bots and fake accounts allegedly took part in the conversation about the movie's "Snyder Cut," a percentage higher than cyber experts mentioned before.

The report WarnerMedia commissioned, of which there are two, was reportedly obtained by Rolling Stone.

WarnerMedia's Snyder Cut Study Details

WarnerMedia mentioned in its commissioned report that at least 13% of the accounts that took part in the "Snyder Cut" conversation were fake and were made by bots. This percentage is also well above the three to five percent that cyber experts typically see in any trending topic.

These fake accounts and bots may have also helped shake down Warner Bros. to release the Snyder cut almost four years after the theatrical version's release, which was in 2017.

The bots and fake accounts' influence didn't stop there. They also bolstered the movie's chances of winning an award at the 2022 Academy Awards, which is the Oscars Cheer Moment for the sequence in which Ezra Miller's The Flash runs through the Speed Force, per Entertainment Weekly.

Thanks to these findings, it can therefore be concluded that fans' voices about the release of the Snyder Cut were disproportionally amplified by bots.

Proving There Are Bots Among Them

To further solidify the reports' findings, Rolling Stone consulted Q5id and Graphika to track the authenticity of the social media campaigns involving the Snyder Cut.

Q5id and Graphika are social media analytics firms that specialize in analyzing how online social networks form, evolve and are manipulated.

the firms discovered that there was some "inauthentic activity" coming from the Snyderverse community - the group of people clamoring for the release of the Snyder Cut.

Another firm, Alethea Group, also found that the website claiming to have made the viral 2018 hashtag #ReleaseTheSnyderCut was, at one point, registered to a person who also ran a now-abandoned ad agency that allegedly brings "cheap, instant Avatar traffic to your website."

Graphika explained that during May and June - a time when multiple communities pushed hashtags promoting Snyder but criticizing Warner Bros. - the pattern of a mostly organic social media fan frenzy that was augmented by a small number of fake accounts could be seen being played out clearly.

Finally, to solidify that bots and fake accounts were involved in the Snyder Cut's release, Rolling Stone asked three cybersecurity and social media intelligence firms, including Q5id, to study Snyderverse-related data and see if there is "inauthentic social media activity."

Q5id's chief information officer and chief technology officer, Becky Wanta, stated that her firm's analysis found definitive proof that bots were involved.

"There are certain patterns that bots give off that we saw here. They arrive at almost the same time in huge numbers," Wanta said. "And many times the origin of thousands or even millions of messages can be traced to a single source or two. Sometimes, they can be traced to unusual servers in remote countries. And their content will be precisely similar."