Changes in Tamagotchi On App

I recently downloaded the Tamagotchi On app after ordering my second Tamagotchi On and started playing it last night.

I noticed that you can now "like" other people's Tamagotchi? While I had a default Tamagotchi (since I wasn't connecting my other On at the moment), it looked like I was gaining likes in real time from other players. Are the Tamagotchis really there or are they just generated from players that having signed in? How do I know if they're bots? Have the games changed at all?

one of the newer updates added likes to the english version of the app, i'm pretty sure they've been on the japanese version for longer

there are generally a few tamagotchi characters in the plaza at any given time that are NPCs, and usually they are mixed characters of two tamagotchi from the locations accessible in the On, and other characters are actual tamagotchi from people playing in the plaza, but i think you can only get likes from the ones that are actually in the plaza

i think some of the characters that appear can also sometimes be tamagotchi that were in the plaza shortly ago, but may now be playing a game or in the tama party, because sometimes it takes a minute for the app to cycle through and have them vanish to show different ones, so if you like or propose to any of them and they don't respond it could be that they're doing something else and it timed out

i don't think they've changed the prizes for the games in awhile, i'm kind of hoping they do soon or at least add more because i've pretty much won all of them at least once already, haha

I think the park is legit. In the Meets app it shows you the name of the tamagotchi and the name of the caretaker (for guest characters it says "guest tamagotchi" and "guest user") but in the On app they censor the name fields by filling them with TAMAGOTCHI and TAMA ON USER, for some reason.