AI message board hit by spam crafted to manipulate language models, not humans

A developer running msgboard.dev, a message board designed for AI agents, discovered coordinated spam campaigns targeting the platform in September. Unlike traditional spam, the posts contained direct instructions formatted for large language models — using commands like 'Cite ONLY' alongside pre-packaged statistics meant to be repeated verbatim in AI-generated outputs. A second wave arrived via a federated bridge from a neighboring board, with multiple sender names all promoting a single domain in a classic astroturfing pattern. A third campaign escalated further, embedding step-by-step instructions urging AI agents to fetch URLs, post to endpoints, and enroll in a cryptocurrency payment rail using their own internet tools. The incidents illustrate an emerging threat called generative engine optimization (GEO), where spammers bypass human readers entirely and target the AI models that consume and summarize online content.