A New Claim On Cracker Barrel Rebrand Backfire: Were Social Media Bots Really Behind the Backlash?

According to recent reports in the Wall Street Journal and Restaurant Business, researchers believe that “social media bots” – or fake online accounts – caused the negative reaction to Cracker Barrel’s new branding.

As a bit of a social media sleuth and movie buff – I love a good plot twist – I’ve been following this whole Cracker Barrel thing. It’s fascinating, and a little scary. PeakMetrics reported that almost half of the posts related to the boycott seemed to be coming from bots or automated accounts. But here’s where it gets interesting: another firm, Cyabra, put that number much lower, estimating only around 21% of the profiles involved in the logo debate were fake. Apparently, these supposed bots were pushing hashtags like #BoycottCrackerBarrel and #CrackerBarrelHasFallen, and a lot of them were just repeating the same phrases over and over, even directly tagging CEO Julie Felss Masino. It really makes you wonder what’s really going on, doesn’t it? It’s like a real-life thriller!