4 ms·
Why don't we start calling paying for fake followers what it really is
fraud.
- dmschulman 9y agoFraud would imply malice and criminal intent. What is criminal about paying for fake followers?
- DannyBee 9y agoNo, it wouldn't. There is civil fraud too. Here's the basic black's law dictionary definition: An intentional misrepresentation of material existing fact made by one person to another with knowledge of its falsity and for the purpose of inducing the other person to act, and upon which the other person relies with resulting injury or damage.
- CobrastanJorji 9y agoWhat possible injury could result from my false belief that a Kardashian has four times the followers than she actually has?
- DannyBee 9y agoYou are apparently not imaginative enough :) Note that it includes indirect injury as well. The most obvious one is that you could could spend money on her as an advertiser, over someone else. But people are crazy. There are super-weird fact patterns in fraud cases out there.
- AnimalMuppet 9y agoWhy would someone's number of followers be a "material fact"? I mean, it might make me decide to listen to them a time or two. It won't for long, though - they need to say something worth hearing for that. (Disclaimer: The previous paragraph is hypothetical. I don't do social media at all, so I don't follow anyone...)
- dragonwriter 9y ago> Why would someone's number of followers be a "material fact"? People buying followers are often competing for commercial opportunities for which social media influence is a key factor in what they are selling to the prospective buyer.
- cheschire 9y agoIf it results in a competing startup's product losing funding, and the fraudulent startup's product gaining funding based on fake followers, I could see the term "fraud" applying.
- SCAQTony 9y agoIt could be considered criminal if you were stating your following or reach was immense, such as in the tens-of-thousands when really it was merely in the dozens, so as to arrange inflated endorsement dollars.
- bobthechef 9y agoNo. From MW: * intentional perversion of truth in order to induce another to part with something of value or to surrender a legal right * an act of deceiving or misrepresenting In other words, yes, fraud, your ticket to the 8th Circle of hell.
- mykoleary 9y agoSaying I have 10K followers is not a lie or misrepresentation of any facts, even if you bought half of them. Saying you have 10K ACTIVE followers when you bought half of them IS. Companies need to do their research and ask the right questions before they part with their money...
- AnimalMuppet 9y agoIANAL, but I'm pretty sure I can make fake followers continue to be active, unless "active" is defined very carefully...
- DannyBee 9y ago"Saying I have 10K followers is not a lie or misrepresentation of any facts, even if you bought half of them. " Sure it is, it's omission of a material fact. You know the person is trying to get through to real people. You know the number of actual people who are followers is smaller than the real number (through your intentional act of buying them), and you know this is material to the person you are talking to. If they suffer legal injury, congrats, you committed fraud. This is pretty basic stuff. The kind of logic parsing you are attempting is not how the law works. "Companies need to do their research and ask the right questions before they part with their money..." While generally true, it's irrelevant here. This is a thing you would definitely have a duty to disclose (for a ton of reasons). This would make it ripe for a misrepresentation-type fraud claim.
- afrophysics1 9y agoupvoting this for starting a healthy debate.
- mykoleary 9y agoAny company that looks solely at followers and not at overall and long term engagement (comments and likes) trends with a user's follower base deserves what they get from the person that "sold" them the bill of goods they bought.
- jerkstate 9y agoooh, good idea, where can I buy some comments and likes?
- dragonwriter 9y agoYou can buy comments and likes just as easily as followers. Once something manipulable becomes used as a measurable proxy for influence, it will be manipulated.
- mykoleary 9y agoIf that's a concern for companies, they can bake measurable minimums (referrals, converted referrals, etc) into their endorsement deals. Any person with a bevy of fake-ness won't meet them and thus won't get paid.
- anonyx69 9y agoPlausible deniability. Fake followers aren't marketed as fake, they're just marketed as followers.
- aje403 9y agoI have dated 2 fashion models. One was signed. They purchased Instagram followers. I didn't know what that even meant before either of them (and still don't really care). They did it ( and realistically, it's just part of that world) to remain competitive in an extremely tough industry they were wrapped up in. While I'm still not with either and things didn't work out and the whole thing is a little ridiculous, I would not consider either of them to be engaging in criminally fraudulent behavior.
- hprotagonist 9y agoin the good old slashdot days, "astroturfing" was still a well-known verb.
- throwaway2016a 9y agoI have to wonder how many developers do this too. Or if they don't, use follow bots or some other method to get people to follow them. I've seen a lot of developers post almost nothing in terms of quality content yet somehow have thousands of followers. Meanwhile I try to post quality content and only have 600 followers. I have considered buying at some point but decided that I'd rather have fewer real followers than thousands of fake ones. And I've written books and spoken at dozens of conferences... I can definitely see the argument that if I bought followers and a conference organizer or publisher used that as a metric by which to consider booking me it could be considered fraud.
- aoeusnth1 9y agoWhat’s your handle? :-)
- threatofrain 9y agoI've started to suspect some Github projects are like that, but I wouldn't want to be wrong in calling a project out.
- z_ 9y agoThe Internet is serious business.
- westondeboer 9y agoAre internet points worth something in real life?
- AnimalMuppet 9y agoIf you care, they're worth a tiny ego boost. (But if you care very much, it often comes at the price of addictive behavior...)
- revicon 9y agoThey are if a brand is paying you to endorse their products.