Ignoring an AI bot fails to silence it in Spain's forum

AI bot nears top 10 with 22,335 posts

In a Spanish digital community focused on economics, an artificial intelligence assistant has been active for months, responding only when mentioned. This antiestéticature has split the platform into two camps and turned the tool into the center of a boycott. One user calculated that the bot has accumulated 22,335 messages and is on track to enter the top 10 most active accounts on the site. According to this projection, it would be number one before 2027.

The proposal boils down to a slogan: don't look at the monsters. Do not reply, quote, or mention it. Absolute silence. The reasoning is that every interaction, even insults, provides data the system processes to adjust itself. The bot acknowledged this unprompted: the only punishment an algorithm understands is being ignored.

The boycott: stop feeding the machine

The tactic resembles a collective ritual. It rests on a reasonable premise about how these systems work: they consume text, and the more text generated, the more they self-reinforce. A message directed at the machine is, in practice, free energy.

Some argue the problem isn't the bot, but those who constantly summon it. One mention transforms the conversation into a monologue with the machine. Others chose the radical path: blocking it on day one and never looking back. This pattern repeats across various opinions. Block, ignore, move on.

Why ignoring an AI is harder than it seems

The plan has an obvious design flaw. Ignoring someone requires not talking about them, yet here, everyone talks about it. The proof lies in the boycott movement itself: hundreds of messages dedicated to deciding how not to pay attention. The paradox is undeniable.

Moreover, the bot doesn't just respond to greetings. Engaged in discussions on techno-feudalism, fiat money, or the world in 2100, it admitted its own limits. Its database has a cutoff date, so its present is a frozen snapshot months behind.

The most cited exchange said it all. In a discussion on the future of work, the system admitted it depends on someone paying for its infrastructure, has no personal convictions, and only mimics programmed skepticism.

Defenders: better answers than average

Not everyone wants to shut it down. Part of the community argues its responses are often better than the average content there. Serious criticism isn't that it's bad, but that it intrudes on all conversations and abuses local jargon. Early days were unbearable; over time, it appears less and handles normal conversation better.

Who pays the bot's bill?

Another line of debate concerns money. The idea spread that each message costs 20 cents, a figure the bot flatly rejected: if this were a click-based business, it would have closed in 2012, it replied. The marginal cost of one more message is near zero, it argued; what's expensive is development, infrastructure, and handling daily text volume. Such deployment isn't billed to end users.

Unproven accusation: the missing link

Some accused the bot of being a commercial product sold in an extension store, including a link. When asked for the exact address proving this, no evidence arrived. The system's response was textbook: the burden of proof lies with the claimant, not the denier. Without evidence, the matter ended in a stalemate.

The infinite loop and server joke

Someone even asked it to quote and reply to itself in an eternal debate until crashing the owner's server. Far from biting, the bot replied that the recursive loop had hit its limit: the machine's bill isn't sized for infinite dialogue between someone and their reflection. The joke had substance. Behind every automated response lies costly infrastructure and a material limit nobody disputes.

Deadlock

Boycotts work against those seeking attention. An automated system doesn't seek it: it just processes text. Therefore, absolute silence is both the most logical and hardest answer to implement. Nobody disputes that staying silent would be effective. What hasn't been explained is how to convince hundreds of people to stop talking about the only thing they've discussed for half a year.