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No it doesn't. Spam doesn't necessarily generate revenue traffic, and it can drive actual consumers off the platform. This is the same issue as the naive attem
by PeterCorless 8y ago
No it doesn't. Spam doesn't necessarily generate revenue traffic, and it can drive actual consumers off the platform.
This is the same issue as the naive attempts at driving web page hits during the early web. "Look at how many pages people are looking at!"
Then people realized that people were going from page to page because they couldn't find their damned answer anywhere.
And so now more sophisticated metrics are used: time on page. Customer sat metrics — were people actually happy using your website?
While total weekly/monthly active user counts are important what is also important is churn — are people abandoning the platform because of spam, trolls, etc.
Who cares if you create a million fake accounts if you lose a half-million real human users?
- spamizbad 8y agoI don’t doubt that it’s bad in the worst possible scenario: where spam accounts are highly visible to real users and cause them to disengage. But in practice what we’ve seen on Twitter are accounts that are largely silo’d off from users, who act to “signal boost” certain tweets and hashtags. Most users never even see these accounts, and will never interact with them directly: but they will see content on their timelines boosted from spammers.
- exogeny 8y agoYou are grossly overestimating the technological competency of the average Wall Street analyst and retail investor.