It’s easy to make the argument that an image of the content, instead of on a t-shirt is equally as much a promotion for a product as neither comes with the possibility of purchasing them through the post. Or even worse, an image could be put on a jumper, a mug or even sent to a printshop to be made into a poster.
What if I made a t-shirt with your comment on it? Would that transform your reply into a scam? No.
A post like this is not guaranteed to be by a bad actor, but it is a major red flag and I suggest good actors avoid it or otherwise make their intentions expressly clear if they were to make posts like it. Typically, spam bot accounts would have new and/or barren profiles, or may have bot-like post and comment history such as LLM generated text or two-dimensional “personalities” and interests. I mentioned the choice of medium as something for users to think about as a loose heuristic for critically examining the content that they consume.
It’s easy to make the argument that an image of the content, instead of on a t-shirt is equally as much a promotion for a product as neither comes with the possibility of purchasing them through the post. Or even worse, an image could be put on a jumper, a mug or even sent to a printshop to be made into a poster.
What if I made a t-shirt with your comment on it? Would that transform your reply into a scam? No.
A post like this is not guaranteed to be by a bad actor, but it is a major red flag and I suggest good actors avoid it or otherwise make their intentions expressly clear if they were to make posts like it. Typically, spam bot accounts would have new and/or barren profiles, or may have bot-like post and comment history such as LLM generated text or two-dimensional “personalities” and interests. I mentioned the choice of medium as something for users to think about as a loose heuristic for critically examining the content that they consume.