Netflix has been accused of using bots to spread memes about its new film Bird Box on Twitter, a claim it vehemently denies.
Bird Box premiered on December 21 and quickly spawned thousands of memes. The film itself garnered only lukewarm reviews.
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On Friday, Twitter user @CHASETHEBUSSY pointed out several of the tweets posting memes about the movie had low follower and following counts.
A second user, Sam Weinberg, also thought the accounts were fake and made a video suggesting as much that quickly went viral.
"Netflix is using dozens of fake accounts with suspiciously low tweet/follower counts to seed twitter with viral memes about their movie Bird Box," Mr Weinberg tweeted.
@CHASETHEBUSSY and Mr Weinberg continued to discuss the theory in several follow up tweets, but Netflix told online media site The Daily Dot the meme posters are real.
"The meme content happened and spread organically," a spokesperson said.
Meanwhile some of the users Mr Weinberg suggested were bots have come forward to say they are in fact real people.
"Y'ALL NEED TO LISTEN, IM NOT A BOT LMAOOOOO, like I swear to G o d, I'm a real person [shaking my head] and I actually don't know why the Bird Box tweet got so many likes," said user @Uwurebeca.
"Like I was surprised because it was my first time tweeting something, but then everyONE STARTED SAYING THEY WERE BOTS."
Another user said they just generally liked the film and wanted to share.
"I genuinely enjoyed the movie and saw other people tweeting so I just joined in, I never really post on Twitter or like posts I just look at what people I follow have said," the user, known only as Tara, told The Daily Dot.
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