Cracker Barrel Outrage Was Almost Certainly Driven by Bots, Researchers Say (gizmodo.com)

Researchers say the viral outrage over Cracker Barrel’s innocuous logo tweak was heavily amplified by bots rather than being a purely organic backlash. Intelligence platform PeakMetrics analyzed 52,000 posts on X from the first 24 hours after the announcement and flagged 44.5% as likely or higher bot activity; nearly half (49%) of roughly 1,000 boycott calls were similarly flagged. Across a longer window (Aug. 19–Sept. 5) PeakMetrics found about 2.02 million posts mentioning the story on X, with an estimated 24% likely bot-originated. Open Measures reported parallel chatter on alt-tech sites (Truth Social, Gettr, Gab, 4chan, Rumble) where the change was framed with culture-war terms like “woke” and “DEI.” Technically, the picture is classic bot-assisted amplification: authentic human dismay seeded the thread, then ideological activist accounts with prior culture-war histories—supported by botnets—escalated reach and intensity, creating the illusion of a far larger grassroots movement. PeakMetrics did not tie the activity to any specific organization or state actor, highlighting instead coordinated networks and automated accounts as force multipliers. The implications for AI/ML and platform governance are clear: automated amplification can distort perceived public sentiment, complicate corporate response strategies, and underscores the need for more robust bot-detection, cross-platform monitoring, and transparency in influence operations.