Seems like I can’t get away from bots. My Lessig/Nader post keeps getting hit by comment-bots (programs that leave comments with links to commerce sites). While that’s not particularlly new, the last bot comment is a little novel:

Matthew Says:
May 1st, 2006 at 3:24 am e

Matthew…
Looks like your page was spammed…

Its another case of a bot commenting on other bots. From the syntax, I’m gussing it’s the same program that left the last few comments. I am curious if this bot script happened to be named "Matthew" or it pulled that off of some metadata (or good ‘ol fashioned published content) on this site.

I’ve seen this tactic of having a bot comment on bots occur with chatterbots. I mentioned it briefly in my thesis:

[Some chatterbots are scripted to] voice frustration at other bots within the chatroom, by posting things such as “I can’t believe there are so many bots in this room!” One notable script, perhaps in hopes of eliminating the competition, informs chatters that “If everyone complains to yahoo, we’ll get these bots kicked out. ” These adaptations highlight how authors continually, and reflexively, evolve their scripts based on observation of chatroom reaction to bots and on the results of data collected by the bots in one-to-one IM sessions.