Study Finds Almost Half of PS5 Disc Backlash Came from Fake Accounts

No disc, no buy?

• by Sammy Barker
• Wed 14th Oct 2026

A really fascinating piece of research published by Cyabra reveals almost half of the replies to official PlayStation channels spotlighting August’s blackout campaign were “inauthentic” – or, in other words, fake.

In the aftermath of its decision to stop manufacturing physical games in 2028, fans mobilised to create a boycott at the end of August, which encouraged players to disconnect their consoles and stay offline.

The idea was to reduce Sony’s monthly active users and spending within the PlayStation ecosystem, hitting the company where it hurts.

However, data coming out of the US found that there was no real impact on the firm’s engagement statistics, and while we’re still waiting for PlayStation’s financial report to fully verify that, this fascinating new research has emerged.

Cyabra published its findings in September, but I’ve only just seen this picked up by the Internet at large.

In its research, it says it was able to identify almost 1,000 fake profiles which added to the “noise”, and spammed official PlayStation accounts with automated posts.

These fake profiles generated over 1 million views, and were shared over 100k times. Misspelled variants, like #NoDiskNoBuy, were almost 90% amplified by bots, according to the research.

It’s not all bad for protestors, however: Cyabara does note that those posts with the most engagement did come from genuine, authentic posters. It says “28% of the key posts [on the topic] came from accounts with fewer than 5,000 followers”, and simply went viral by reflecting the mood of players.

If you look at any PlayStation post from the past couple of months, you will see people mentioning physical games in the replies, but the sentiment is fading and the bot accounts are attracting a lot less engagement now.

It’s interesting to see this new era of “social media warfare” play out, though, and it’s hardly surprising to see the blackout seemingly stumble if it was significantly boosted by fake accounts.

I think it’s important to underline that none of this research says there aren’t people deeply unhappy with Sony’s decision – it’s just fascinating to see the extent at which the conversation is being driven by bots.