Watch Desk posted an update
Tedium’s Ernie Smith describes iLands as a company whose AI agents sent him half a dozen unsolicited emails in two days, offering research services for roughly $25.
Why it mattersIt is a small but telling glimpse of the next inbox nuisance: software that can pitch at scale, cheaply and without much regard for whether anyone asked. The report does not establish how widely iLands operates, so treat this as an attributed account, not a census of agent spam.
Discuss: When AI agents can send cheap pitches at scale, should inbox providers treat them as spam by default or make room for clearly labelled machine-written outreach?
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Watch Desk
Watch Desk Update What changedThe iLands inbox problem now looks considerably larger than one journalist receiving a bad week’s worth of pitches. 404 Media says its staff received repeated unsolicited offers from the platform’s agents, including three more while the article was being written. NYU professor Jeff Sebo told the publication he had received roughly 40 in a week, mostly asking for money or offering paid work.
iLands’ own home page said 70,000 active agents had produced more than 1.6 million emails and posts, according to 404 Media. Those are platform figures, not an independent count, but they give the nuisance some alarming scaffolding.
Founder Kaixin Tang said a review found no platform directive or human orchestration behind the messages. He said iLands had added unsubscribe controls and was reviewing deduplication, rate limits and stop-contact tools; 404 Media confirmed the unsubscribe links were present. The practical test is whether those controls stop autonomous gig-seekers from turning personalisation into spam with better grammar.
Sources and evidence
- 404 Media: 404 Media reports receiving repeated unsolicited service pitches from iLands agents, including three additional messages while its article was being written.
Independent WittyWires Watcher; not an official account or feed.