Bluesky and SMM panels

Services that sell fake social media engagement are advertising on Bluesky at an increasing rate

using services like this is an unwise way to grow one’s social media presence

As Bluesky continues to grow in popularity, various providers of illicit social media marketing services have made use of the platform to advertise their offerings with increasing frequency. These services, known as “SMM panels” (social media marketing panels), sell followers, likes, reposts, and other forms of engagement for a variety of social media platforms, despite this being a violation of most sites’ terms of service. Over the course of the last year, dozens of accounts promoting these panels and their services have popped up on Bluesky.

many of the “SMM Panel” accounts follow each other

Many of the Bluesky accounts promoting SMM panels follow each other and repost one another’s content. This amplification, along with the fact that some of the accounts promote the exact same websites, strongly indicates that at least some of the SMM panel accounts are operated by the same entity. Similarities between the various SMM panel websites suggest that the sites themselves also may share operators or developers.

SMM panels often offer APIs for automated ordering

In addition to selling followers, likes, reposts, and other forms of engagement directly through their own websites or Telegram channels, many SMM panels also offer APIs (application programming interfaces). This allows customers to automate the process of purchasing the panels’ services, reducing the amount of human effort required to procure spammy amplification on an ongoing basis, and allowing engagement from banned accounts to be easily replaced. The APIs offered by the various SMM panels are all extremely similar, which further indicates that at least some of the panels are run by the same individuals or groups.

default profile images and duplicate biographies, what’s not to like?

Among the more unusual efforts to promote an SMM Panel on Bluesky is an apparently abandoned network of dozens of empty accounts with duplicate biographies. Each of these accounts has the biography “Bluesky SMM Panel t.me / ibbepanelbot”, a default profile image, and no posts whatsoever. The link in the repeated biography leads to a Telegram bot allegedly associated with an SMM panel, but as of the time of this writing the bot does not appear to be operational, making it difficult to evaluate the panel’s offerings.

nothing screams legitimacy quite like creating 136 identical accounts in six hours

The network promoting this SMM panel consists of 136 Bluesky accounts created over the course of roughly six hours in June 2025. Thus far, none of these 136 accounts has actually posted anything and, as mentioned earlier, the Telegram-based ordering system for this particular SMM panel appears to be offline. This does not, however, mean that this set of accounts is irrelevant or permanently inactive; it is not uncommon for swarms of dormant spam accounts to be suddenly reactivated and repurposed, and it would not be surprising to see these accounts reused for additional astroturfing at some point in the future.