A cybersecurity firm has found bots promoting GameStop shares on social media before and after the stock’s wild rise last month Reuters report. According to Massachusetts-based PiiQ Media, social media bots promoted Dogecoin, GameStop and other “meme” shares in posts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. The firm estimates that tens of thousands of bots participated in it, but it is still unclear how much influence they had or did not have on the rise and fall of GME and other stocks.
Shares in GME skyrocketed in January when Reddit users on r / wallstreetbets pulled around the stock in an attempt to leverage hedge funds based on the video game business. PiiQ tells Reuters it detected “patterns of artificial behavior” in GameStop-related posts just before the chaos on January 28 to February 18.
PiiQ did not analyze Reddit traffic, and Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said during the hearing before House Financial Services in February that the platform did not detect any significant bot-driven activity or foreign players on the subreddit as part of the GME trade hype.
The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating the GameStop saga and the Senate Banking Committee plans to hold a hearing on ‘the current state of the stock market’.