Thought to Be a Robot, Turns Out to Be a Real Indonesian Person

Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia - Nikita Bier, Head of Product at platform X (formerly Twitter), was taken aback while investigating suspicious activity on the platform. He initially suspected the use of advanced bots behind dozens of accounts with Indonesian IP addresses. Bier discovered an individual operating up to 30 accounts simultaneously. He assumed this activity was run using automated technology or artificial intelligence (AI). “I was investigating a man running 30 accounts with an Indonesian IP address, and I was trying to figure out what tool he was using,” Bier wrote on his X account, quoted by CNBC Indonesia, Wednesday (25/3/2026). However, he uncovered a different fact from his initial assumption. Bier found a real human from Indonesia manually running those bot-like accounts. “I found out that it was AI: a real Indonesian person,” he said. This discovery highlights the practice of managing multiple accounts by certain individuals or groups, which is often mistaken for bot activity. In some cases, such activities are carried out by human labour with coordination.