My @Horse_ebooks offer
Like thousands of people who spend too much time the internet, I’ve become strangely obsessed with the mysterious spam Twitter bot @Horse_ebooks. Not much is known about Horse_ebooks, though it appears to be part of a network of spam accounts promoting dumb ebooks.
Thing is, I really want to know about the person behind Horse_ebooks. As John Hermann explains in his great article about the Horse_ebooks phenomenon, the Twitter account points to a barebones ebook retailer, horse-ebooks.com. This is one of about 170 domains registered to some Russian guy named Alexei Kouznetsov. Kouznetsov’s address, according to the whois record, is:
Alexei Kouznetsov Kouznetsov
Lenina 11
Moskow, 100100
Russian Federation
(Here is his address on Google maps.)
So here’s my offer: I’ll pay someone $50 (1597 rubles) UPDATE: $160 to go knock on the door at Lenina 11 and report to me what you find there. If you actually discover the truth about horse_ebooks and Alexei Kouznetsov through this visit I’ll give you another $25. Does Alexi exist? Is he aware of the sensation horse_ebooks has become? Is he really making money from this bullshit?
