Roquetas townhall has been using spam bots to promote the towns bullfighting festivals across social media networks, according to a complaint from the opposition IU party.
The ruling PP party under Mayor Gabriel Amat has for years been promoting bullfighting in Roquetas, paying tens of thousands a year from townhall coffers to organise them.
Part of the excuse for the bullfights was that it attracts tourism, and the townhall has in the past pointed to social media chatter about the town.
But IU councillor Juan Pablo Yakubiuk has surveyed a large number of twitter and facebook comments about the town hall sponsored bullfights, and come to the conclusion that someone in the townhall is using automated software (spam bots) to push out the same repeated message across dozens of different fake accounts.
“It seems the PP make use of spam bots to promote bullfighting in Roquetas. The wasteful spending has no end” complained Juan during a press release earlier today.
Spam bots are computer programs masquerading as humans on social media networks which send out advertising. They are not only annoying, but they are usually against the terms of use of the website, so the townhall is technically using an illegal advertising technique to desperately try to get more interest towards the expensive, wasteful and little wanted pasttime that is bullfighting.
Parece que el PP tiene que tirar de robots de spam para promocionar el toreo en Roquetas. El derroche no para. pic.twitter.com/3nAYxuObbb
— Yakubiuk (@yakubiuk) October 2, 2014