I Eat for Free in NYC Using Python, Automation, AI, and Instagram

This is simultaneously both a cool project and a depressingly complete waste of human potential to create and consume via that demon scroll of mindless consumption that is Instagram…

Re: I Eat for Free in NYC Using Python, Automation, AI, and Instagram

#6

Post by unethical_ban » Wed, Mar 23, 2022, 2:13 PM UTC

Person creates website with some content. Person verifiably has 25k people looking at it at least sometimes. Restaurants give him a meal in exchange for ad space(sponsored review).

Other than further polluting the new web with fake bullshit content, there doesn't seem to be anything immoral about it. It just "feels" a bit scummy. But hey, a man's gotta eat.

Re: I Eat for Free in NYC Using Python, Automation, AI, and Instagram

#7

Post by kurisufag » Wed, Mar 23, 2022, 2:15 PM UTC

this is a significantly less criminal version of bruting gift card checking pages, which was both very doable and popular ~5-10 years ago. the cards themselves had something like 16 characters, but only the last 4 would be variable at any time -- with a couple proxies, you could successfully catch codes after they were activated but before they were redeemed. I'm not sure there was any recourse for the party that was inevitably unable to redeem the gift card they had bought.

Re: I Eat for Free in NYC Using Python, Automation, AI, and Instagram

#8

Post by switz » Wed, Mar 23, 2022, 2:16 PM UTC

I respect the time, effort, and engineering the author put in. But this sort of thing largely just makes me feel gross.

We’re moving towards an Internet that’s just one never ending loop of regurgitated spam. Call me naive, but I wish people wielding these skills felt more responsibility to be good citizens of the Internet, rather than spamming cyclical stolen content and “growth hacking” their way to followers by manipulating social networks. The Internet is in no way, shape or form, pure. But I do wish we would stop treating fellow users (humans) as play things just to get a free dinner.

Is it just because I grew up on the Internet starting 20+ years ago that I’m hyper sensitive to spam?

Re: I Eat for Free in NYC Using Python, Automation, AI, and Instagram

#9

Post by kurisufag » Wed, Mar 23, 2022, 2:18 PM UTC

rdtwo wrote: post #3

Instagram “influencer” extorting restaurant for money that’s so 2018

extortion would be threatening to give a poor review, as it is it's just advertising

Re: I Eat for Free in NYC Using Python, Automation, AI, and Instagram

#10

Post by LionHigh » Wed, Mar 23, 2022, 2:36 PM UTC

Leveraging social currency to obtain free food? I hate to break it to this guy, but women have already found a way to automate this process far more efficiently.