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> Auto-populating content (fake users) and generating the illusion of activity The other owner of a project of ours once suggested doing this. I rejected that

> Auto-populating content (fake users) and generating the illusion of activity The other owner of a project of ours once suggested doing this. I rejected that because of ethical reasons. I also told that could mean legal trouble. Was I completely naive/wrong?

bpicolo 9y ago
It's certainly not illegal, at least in terms of social media. There's no contract/obligation/whatnot that a username be mappable to a single distinct human. I wouldn't really consider it unethical in the reddit case either, but I could imagine opinions vary.
philipov 9y ago
I think there's a difference between providing your own seed content and fake users. In the case of a forum, I see nothing ethically wrong with having a user role marked "Staff Writer" or some-such.
chatmasta 9y ago
How’d the project go? Did you get any users? I’m going to go ahead and guess the answer is “no.” So yes, you were naive. Very few social apps (or marketplace apps even) overcome the chicken/egg problem without some form of faked content. After all, who’s going to post to an empty forum? I’ve growth hacked an app to 600k users across 200 communities (colleges). What worked for us was seeding each new community with enough fake content for the first few days. After that the real users took over. The most interesting aspect of that growth hack was that users would post content similar to what we seeded it with. So we could create the “vibe” of the community with fake posts, and soon it turned very real.
- tieTYT 9y ago
  I'm interested in hearing more details. You ever write blog articles that go into more depth?
  - chatmasta 9y ago
    At some point I will (the story is pretty crazy) but for now I’d like to keep certain details of my life private, so I avoid blogging. I used to think I’d need a blog to attract consulting clients, but I’ve had no problem without one so far, and thus I haven’t gotten around to it. My personal website is basically Lorem Ipsum lol. If you’re really interested, shoot me an email. I’m happy to talk one on one.
- bowlich 9y ago
  But that doesn't answer the ethical question. Success and imminent failure are not a justifications for unethical actions. If success cannot be achieved without unethical action, then perhaps it is best to fail. Misrepresenting the nature of the content would certainly fail Kant's deontological tests.
  - chatmasta 9y ago
    I’d like to hear an example of a chicken/egg social app that did not fake content at the beginning. If you can’t think of one, or there’s few examples, then there’s also the ethical consideration to your stakeholders (eg investors). Is it ethical to forego a legal opportunity to grow your user base? Do you have an obligation to your investors to do all you can to build a successful product? My personal ethics revolve around the question of “am I hurting anyone?” I really can’t imagine how posting fake content to your own forum is hurting anyone. By I can see how neglecting to take steps to grow your user base could hurt people (yourself included, if the business fails). Would you rather that Reddit had never faked content? More likely than not, if they hadn’t done that, Reddit would not exist today. So isn’t that a net positive from an ethical perspective?
    - bowlich 9y ago
      The weakness in the teaching of ethics, and in particular the lack of discourse in ethics amongst business in this nation is utterly frustrating. That you can do something (within the law) or that no moral outrage would occur is itself not a measure of ethical action. Not dealing harm is itself a rather weak ethical stance. Ethics doesn't test whether you do no harm, it tests whether you maximized the good -- and not the good for you or your investors, but rather the good across all of society. If anyone holds you to an obligation that entails that you take an unethical action then such a license itself become immediately void. We can see this historically expressed by St. Augustine in the 3rd century and more recently by Martin Luther King Jr. (an unjust law is no law). Hence, the law itself is not a measure of ethical act. That you _can_ do something is not itself a justification of ethical action. Only that you _should_ do something is itself a measure of ethics. In which case you must provide proof that you _should_ misrepresent yourself and your content. Returning to Kant. If you cannot universalize the action -- that is to say, if you cannot show that to create fake content is always a good act (and with all the rufus about "Fake news," I think we certainly cannot show that fake content has been universally good). Jumping into the question of net good we skip from deontology to utilitarianism. Yet, utilitarianism recognizes that net good is not a measure of money, or pleasure but can be an abstract measurement. Success of the business is only a local consideration, you must expand the ethical question to all of society. That which is good for you or your investors is not itself a net good for society (nor from a deontological perspective a good unto itself). Was the success of Reddit a net positive for society? Had there been no Reddit would our net quality of life have been improved as a whole society. In this, I would say Reddit was not a net positive for society. It consolidated a distributed system of smaller social forums across the internet into a single hegemonic gated community and consolidating social power into a smaller sum of hands. And I would argue that consolidation of power into smaller groups (whether hard or soft power and in this case we are discussing the soft power of cultural norms) is itself unethical.
- egeozcan 9y ago
  You guessed right. At one point I lost my motivation and took the offer to get paid for the work I've since the beginning put in, for my shares. They tried to do the growth hacking stuff but for them it was a thing they read a few blog posts about, so it didn't help. The whole thing just shut down after a few months.
- johnsimer 9y ago
  Hey, I have a friend working on a very similar app to the app you worked on, just messaged you on LinkedIn.would love to talk about it
btgeekboy 9y ago
I think there's a bit of a difference between priming the pump so that your forum looks active, vs. having sockpuppets included in your active user numbers that you use to try to get funding. The former's a bit murky, but I'm okay with it at the start of something new and being phased out. The latter's straight up unethical and (IANAL) potentially illegal.
paulcole 9y ago
>I also told that could mean legal trouble. I would've certainly asked for a clear explanation of this as it's hard for me to believe it's remotely true.

bpicolo 9y ago

It's certainly not illegal, at least in terms of social media. There's no contract/obligation/whatnot that a username be mappable to a single distinct human. I wouldn't really consider it unethical in the reddit case either, but I could imagine opinions vary.

philipov 9y ago

I think there's a difference between providing your own seed content and fake users. In the case of a forum, I see nothing ethically wrong with having a user role marked "Staff Writer" or some-such.

chatmasta 9y ago

How’d the project go? Did you get any users? I’m going to go ahead and guess the answer is “no.” So yes, you were naive. Very few social apps (or marketplace apps even) overcome the chicken/egg problem without some form of faked content. After all, who’s going to post to an empty forum? I’ve growth hacked an app to 600k users across 200 communities (colleges). What worked for us was seeding each new community with enough fake content for the first few days. After that the real users took over. The most interesting aspect of that growth hack was that users would post content similar to what we seeded it with. So we could create the “vibe” of the community with fake posts, and soon it turned very real.

tieTYT 9y ago
I'm interested in hearing more details. You ever write blog articles that go into more depth?
- chatmasta 9y ago
  At some point I will (the story is pretty crazy) but for now I’d like to keep certain details of my life private, so I avoid blogging. I used to think I’d need a blog to attract consulting clients, but I’ve had no problem without one so far, and thus I haven’t gotten around to it. My personal website is basically Lorem Ipsum lol. If you’re really interested, shoot me an email. I’m happy to talk one on one.
bowlich 9y ago
But that doesn't answer the ethical question. Success and imminent failure are not a justifications for unethical actions. If success cannot be achieved without unethical action, then perhaps it is best to fail. Misrepresenting the nature of the content would certainly fail Kant's deontological tests.
- chatmasta 9y ago
  I’d like to hear an example of a chicken/egg social app that did not fake content at the beginning. If you can’t think of one, or there’s few examples, then there’s also the ethical consideration to your stakeholders (eg investors). Is it ethical to forego a legal opportunity to grow your user base? Do you have an obligation to your investors to do all you can to build a successful product? My personal ethics revolve around the question of “am I hurting anyone?” I really can’t imagine how posting fake content to your own forum is hurting anyone. By I can see how neglecting to take steps to grow your user base could hurt people (yourself included, if the business fails). Would you rather that Reddit had never faked content? More likely than not, if they hadn’t done that, Reddit would not exist today. So isn’t that a net positive from an ethical perspective?
  - bowlich 9y ago
    The weakness in the teaching of ethics, and in particular the lack of discourse in ethics amongst business in this nation is utterly frustrating. That you can do something (within the law) or that no moral outrage would occur is itself not a measure of ethical action. Not dealing harm is itself a rather weak ethical stance. Ethics doesn't test whether you do no harm, it tests whether you maximized the good -- and not the good for you or your investors, but rather the good across all of society. If anyone holds you to an obligation that entails that you take an unethical action then such a license itself become immediately void. We can see this historically expressed by St. Augustine in the 3rd century and more recently by Martin Luther King Jr. (an unjust law is no law). Hence, the law itself is not a measure of ethical act. That you _can_ do something is not itself a justification of ethical action. Only that you _should_ do something is itself a measure of ethics. In which case you must provide proof that you _should_ misrepresent yourself and your content. Returning to Kant. If you cannot universalize the action -- that is to say, if you cannot show that to create fake content is always a good act (and with all the rufus about "Fake news," I think we certainly cannot show that fake content has been universally good). Jumping into the question of net good we skip from deontology to utilitarianism. Yet, utilitarianism recognizes that net good is not a measure of money, or pleasure but can be an abstract measurement. Success of the business is only a local consideration, you must expand the ethical question to all of society. That which is good for you or your investors is not itself a net good for society (nor from a deontological perspective a good unto itself). Was the success of Reddit a net positive for society? Had there been no Reddit would our net quality of life have been improved as a whole society. In this, I would say Reddit was not a net positive for society. It consolidated a distributed system of smaller social forums across the internet into a single hegemonic gated community and consolidating social power into a smaller sum of hands. And I would argue that consolidation of power into smaller groups (whether hard or soft power and in this case we are discussing the soft power of cultural norms) is itself unethical.
egeozcan 9y ago
You guessed right. At one point I lost my motivation and took the offer to get paid for the work I've since the beginning put in, for my shares. They tried to do the growth hacking stuff but for them it was a thing they read a few blog posts about, so it didn't help. The whole thing just shut down after a few months.
johnsimer 9y ago
Hey, I have a friend working on a very similar app to the app you worked on, just messaged you on LinkedIn.would love to talk about it

btgeekboy 9y ago

I think there's a bit of a difference between priming the pump so that your forum looks active, vs. having sockpuppets included in your active user numbers that you use to try to get funding. The former's a bit murky, but I'm okay with it at the start of something new and being phased out. The latter's straight up unethical and (IANAL) potentially illegal.

paulcole 9y ago

>I also told that could mean legal trouble. I would've certainly asked for a clear explanation of this as it's hard for me to believe it's remotely true.