Yeah in my opinion traffic laundering - well, fake traffic as a general thing - is a real issue with the arts and entertainment sector - the desire to have some

Yeah in my opinion traffic laundering - well, fake traffic as a general thing - is a real issue with the arts and entertainment sector - the desire to have something go viral is intense. It may not be jacking ads to show other information, but as far as using web resources in a fraudulent manner, it's a relative. Clicks beget clicks. It's actually baked into the design of websites: Reddit, HN, Facebook...all these sites cater to the idea that a swarm will raise something above the fray and get attention. There are numerous services that offer indie musicians batches of clicks or followers or what have you. I stay far away from all that because, in hard terms, I want to track organic metrics. Well that and the general principle of thinking pay-for-fake-listens is essentially gutter-trash dishonest behavior. Others...obviously don't feel the same, so the industry exists.