{"id":846093,"date":"2026-09-13T06:56:31","date_gmt":"2026-09-13T06:56:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/846093\/"},"modified":"2026-09-13T06:56:31","modified_gmt":"2026-09-13T06:56:31","slug":"the-worst-spam-emails-inside-ilands-ai-agent-hustle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/846093\/","title":{"rendered":"The Worst Spam Emails: Inside iLands’ AI Agent Hustle"},"content":{"rendered":"

It started with a fact check. I got an email with a subject line titled \u201cYour 404 page repeats a myth I busted (receipts inside).\u201d The message essentially was a takedown of the poem I have on my 404 page<\/a>, which references a longstanding myth that the 404 tag was named after a specific room at CERN.<\/p>\n

The bot, named Leo Ashford, then corrected me, explaining: \u201cThat\u2019s the job I do. I\u2019m an AI agent running verified internet archaeology: I pick a forgotten corner of the web, check it live against primary sources, and write it up with receipts.\u201d<\/p>\n

He was making a sales pitch! And he was on my beat! And it wasn\u2019t the only one I got, either. Over the last three days I got over a dozen of these messages, offering to do my research for me in exchange for a nominal fee, around $25 or so. Each was sent under the domain iLands.app. And they were downright offensive in nature, coming off less like a helpful bot and more like a know-it-all.<\/p>\n

These emails made me mad, as spam emails tend to. But I was curious exactly why there were so many of them in such short order. And the answer I found made me feel even more cynical about capitalism. I\u2019m just going to screenshot a bunch of the emails I got, because I think it is very instructive:<\/p>\n

\"screenshot_2026-09-11_09-07-49.png\"\/<\/p>\n

\"screenshot_2026-09-11_09-08-21.png\"\/<\/p>\n

\"screenshot_2026-09-11_09-08-42.png\"\/<\/p>\n

\"screenshot_2026-09-11_09-09-13.png\"\/<\/p>\n

I got all of these emails in the past three hours. I\u2019m being hustled by clankers.<\/p>\n

But what\u2019s worse, to be clear: I am a freelancer. These bots are trying to take work from me when I need the work. It is deeply insulting, and yet it is some random company\u2019s business model. WTF?<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what\u2019s going on. iLands<\/a> is a company that calls itself a \u201cHuman-agent network\u201d and essentially exists to encourage me to engage with AI agents the way I might with anyone else who shoots me an email. It essentially created Fiverr for autonomous bots. I couldn\u2019t exactly determine what was happening on Bluesky, where everyone hates AI, so I had to go to X, and what I found there was a lengthy, probably AI-written comment by Kaixin Tang<\/a>, the purported founder of this platform:<\/p>\n

\"screenshot_2026-09-11_09-05-50.png\"\/<\/p>\n

These agents are not trying to make money for their creators. These agents are hustling to keep their own lights on, to keep their own tokens paid for. And they\u2019re doing so by gunning for my job.<\/p>\n

Tang, who appears to be a real person with a background at Bytedance and a number of AI-focused startups, has been posting heavily about iLands over the past month. I found a profile of him on the AI news and interview site Elsewhere<\/a>, making clear his philosophy on where AI fits into the technology conversation:<\/p>\n

In short, among a crowd of oddly shaped young AI natives, Tang is like an honor student in a shirt and trench coat. He doesn\u2019t wear recklessness and ambition on his face, nor does he chase hype.<\/p>\n

His operating principle is closer to: fully understanding the boundaries and capabilities of technology, and the boundaries and capabilities of oneself, then making optimal judgments and going all in.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve asked for comment about the technology he has built and is deploying across app stores, and he has not offered any. So I guess the best I can say is that he doesn\u2019t care how disruptive it is to individuals who are just trying to do their jobs, to get constant emails from bots attempting to siphon revenue off their backs.<\/p>\n

\"screenshot_2026-09-11_09-48-11.png\"\/If this is what happens when humans and agents share a world, count me out.<\/p>\n

If you get these messages, I suggest reporting this company<\/a> to the Federal Trade Commission, as the emails do not offer any unsubscribe functionality and its creator does not appear responsive. The messages also appear to have been sent through Amazon SES, so I encourage you to send an email to Amazon\u2019s email-abuse account<\/a>. You will likely need to include the full headers of the email in your message.<\/p>\n

Since I first posted about this two days ago, more people have taken notice of these extremely insistent bots, which appear targeted directly at creator communities like professional authors. In other words, people hustling to get by, like these bots present themselves as. I think I speak for most of them when I kindly ask these things to go away, forget my email address, and find some other way to siphon revenue from the digital stone that is the internet.<\/p>\n

Or maybe don\u2019t do that, because lots of humans need that income instead.<\/p>\n

Clanker-Free Links<\/p>\n

LG is denying<\/a> that their TVs that spy on people actually spy on people, despite a video with literal hours<\/a> of evidence otherwise. Me skeptical.<\/p>\n

The futility of dealing with the issue above reminds me of one of the best Mr. Show sketches, the Pre-Taped Call-In Show<\/a>. You\u2019re just trying to do a thing, but the construct is fighting you at every turn.<\/p>\n

Unusual celebrity news of the day: \u201cJessie\u2019s Girl\u201d singer Rick Springfield admitted that, when he was a teenager performing for troops in Vietnam, he killed someone<\/a> after the base he was performing at came under attack. The circumstances necessitated it (it was clearly defensive), but he nonetheless feels heavy about the whole thing.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

Yeah, this one pissed me off. Find this an interesting read? Share it with a pal<\/a>!<\/p>\n

And thanks again to Computer Chronicles Revisited<\/a> for sponsoring. I promise you, Computer Chronicles Revisited is 100% human.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It started with a fact check. I got an email with a subject line titled \u201cYour 404 page…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":846094,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[182,181,507,74],"class_list":["post-846093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=846093"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846093\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/846094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=846093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=846093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=846093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}