AI Advertising Company Hacked

At least some of this is coming to light:

Doublespeed, 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 has been hacked. The hack reveals what products the AI-generated accounts are promoting, often without the required disclosure that these are advertisements, and allowed the hacker to take control of more than 1,000 smartphones that power the company.

The hacker, who asked for anonymity because he feared retaliation from the company, said he reported the vulnerability to Doublespeed on October 31. At the time of writing, the hacker said he still has access to the company’s backend, including the phone farm itself.

Slashdot thread.

Posted on December 19, 2025 at 7:02 AM3 Comments

Comments

KC December 19, 2025 11:33 AM

I’m not on TikTok, but TikTok says the flagged accounts are now labelled as being AI-generated.

TikTok’s Community Guidelines are super interesting.

404 Media links to the section on ‘Edited Media and AI-Generated Content (AIGC)’

https://www.tiktok.com/community-guidelines/en/integrity-authenticity#3

Really basically, and I hope I have this right, creators need to label AI-gen content showing people. They also prohibit content that is misleading about matters of public importance or harmful to individuals. The details therein matter a lot (toggle More information) and I’d love to see their review process.

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