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Ok, why is that more plausible than USA Today buying fake page views? Why is that such a crazy conspiracy theory?

by draw_down 10y ago

treehau5 10y ago
One stakes the reputation of an entire company, and one is as easy as a script kiddie setting up a bot.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- zeta0134 10y ago
  A lot of people seem to think that setting up a botnet is difficult, and it's very surprising when you decide to research and actually do it. It's ridiculously easy. You can rent out established botnets with almost no effort, and if you can run payloads on compromised internet-enabled devices, you can set up your own and coordinate it without much fuss. This is a big problem that no one really knows how to solve.
  - andrewfong 10y ago
    I wonder if there's a way to build a bot net that takes down other bot nets. Basically, create a feedback loop such that the decreasing price of a bot net leads to some action that drives the price back up.
- 67726e 10y ago
  I mean, look at the shenanigans Wells Fargo gets caught up in, which are worse than "buying likes" bot activity. Is it that unbelievable some manager with a bonus tied up in vanity metrics would use bots to boost them?
loeg 10y ago
They reported the unexpected activity from foreign countries to Facebook themselves. I don't think they were in on it. > The purge of such accounts culminated a six-month effort by Facebook to combat the scam, which routed faux profiles through Bangladesh, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, and other countries. > ... > The USA Today spokeswoman told CJR that they flagged the issue for Facebook after noticing an unusually large uptick in followers from the aforementioned countries. “Since we first brought this issue to Facebook’s attention, we have been in close communication with them and look forward to a swift solution that prevents this illegitimate activity from happening on our Facebook page in the future,” Maribel Wadsworth, Gannett’s chief transformation officer, told USA Today Friday.
- taysic 10y ago
  When sites pay other services to increase their fb likes, they are always from other countries for some reason. Because in this case the payer only wants to see the actual like count go up. Not saying we have proof that they did this.
blazespin 10y ago
Because that is an illegal / unethical business practice which would severely tarnish their reputation?
- WillPostForFood 10y ago
  Assuming they even know what they are doing.
avs733 10y ago
because it's less depressing. I'm proposing a corollary to Occam's razor called avs postulate: 1) The likelihood of an explanation being true is correlated with how boring it is 2) crazy conspiracy theories are a useful exercise with which to guide convergence and formal presentation of evidence of 1.
- bjshepard 10y ago
  The avs postulate fails to explain the explanation of the events of november, 1963, and is therefore falsified.

Ok, why is that more plausible than USA Today buying fake page views? Why is that such a crazy conspiracy theory?

treehau5 10y ago

One stakes the reputation of an entire company, and one is as easy as a script kiddie setting up a bot.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
zeta0134 10y ago
A lot of people seem to think that setting up a botnet is difficult, and it's very surprising when you decide to research and actually do it. It's ridiculously easy. You can rent out established botnets with almost no effort, and if you can run payloads on compromised internet-enabled devices, you can set up your own and coordinate it without much fuss. This is a big problem that no one really knows how to solve.
- andrewfong 10y ago
  I wonder if there's a way to build a bot net that takes down other bot nets. Basically, create a feedback loop such that the decreasing price of a bot net leads to some action that drives the price back up.
67726e 10y ago
I mean, look at the shenanigans Wells Fargo gets caught up in, which are worse than "buying likes" bot activity. Is it that unbelievable some manager with a bonus tied up in vanity metrics would use bots to boost them?

loeg 10y ago

They reported the unexpected activity from foreign countries to Facebook themselves. I don't think they were in on it. > The purge of such accounts culminated a six-month effort by Facebook to combat the scam, which routed faux profiles through Bangladesh, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, and other countries. > ... > The USA Today spokeswoman told CJR that they flagged the issue for Facebook after noticing an unusually large uptick in followers from the aforementioned countries. “Since we first brought this issue to Facebook’s attention, we have been in close communication with them and look forward to a swift solution that prevents this illegitimate activity from happening on our Facebook page in the future,” Maribel Wadsworth, Gannett’s chief transformation officer, told USA Today Friday.

taysic 10y ago
When sites pay other services to increase their fb likes, they are always from other countries for some reason. Because in this case the payer only wants to see the actual like count go up. Not saying we have proof that they did this.

blazespin 10y ago

Because that is an illegal / unethical business practice which would severely tarnish their reputation?

WillPostForFood 10y ago
Assuming they even know what they are doing.

avs733 10y ago

because it's less depressing. I'm proposing a corollary to Occam's razor called avs postulate: 1) The likelihood of an explanation being true is correlated with how boring it is 2) crazy conspiracy theories are a useful exercise with which to guide convergence and formal presentation of evidence of 1.

bjshepard 10y ago
The avs postulate fails to explain the explanation of the events of november, 1963, and is therefore falsified.