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After listening to the video I have a hard time seeing the difference between paying for likes vs paying for ads from an ethical stand point. Instead of FB, et

After listening to the video I have a hard time seeing the difference between paying for likes vs paying for ads from an ethical stand point. Instead of FB, etc getting ad money, that ad money is being spread out to many others instead. It also seems like this might be more cost effective than ads. I think I would consider this much more ethical than how Google puts the top 3-5 results as "ads" these days. Sometimes I question how long until I have to go to Page 2 to get off the advertised results. Note - In the above I'm only considering this practice being done by legitimate places sharing fairly accurate or honest content. Such as a business trying to promote a sale or a blog piece. I would consider paid ads, paid likes, paid comments, etc., to be unethical if the content they're supporting is false. TLDR: What's the difference between paying Facebook/Google/etc for an ad vs paying someone else to like your post? The 2nd seems like a better solution for a majority of people.

miohtama 7y ago
The difference is the disclosure. Only on the other you know that money is being used to affect your opinion on something.
- mattferderer 7y ago
  Excellent point. Though it can be easy to miss the tiny text that says "advertisement". I recall buying Facebook ads for places in the early days of their system that benefited off this & having it say which friends also liked this content.
nammi 7y ago
People expect that companies pay for their ads to be presented. A big reason for buying likes seems to be deceiving people into believing the posts aren't ads. I'd say it's similar to "sponsored content" that doesn't disclose the fact that it's sponsored
- abcpassword 7y ago
  I make some money via fake clicks. The promoted content is always obviously an ad, and is sometimes literally an ad.
- ryandrake 7y ago
  I think, at this point it is safe to assume that on any platform where individual content can be promoted via a crowdsourced upvote, including star ratings and "likes", much of what rises to the top is manipulated in some way, often sponsored (paid for) by a commercial interest. This includes FB posts and Amazon reviews, but also comments on reddit and even HN comments and articles. I would love to see internal reports from these companies about what % of each platform's accounts and/or activity they estimate to be automated, botted, farmed, fraudulent, etc. but for obvious reasons nobody seems to be willing to regularly publish this information!
  - vonmoltke 7y ago
    Not percentages, but actual numbers of reports and suspicious account challenges: https://transparency.twitter.com/en/platform-manipulation.html https://transparency.twitter.com/en/platform-manipulation.ht...
    - ryandrake 7y ago
      I stand corrected. Great job, Twitter!
- wolco 7y ago
  People buy likes because of price and reach. If the price of ads and the reach were similiar this wouldn't exist. Who thought like would be a good gauge without dislke is beyond me. Dislike would provide a way to display displeasure and drop the value of the orginal like.
  - JohnFen 7y ago
    > Dislike would provide a way to display displeasure and drop the value of the orginal like. And would double the business of the like factories, because they would expand into doing paid dislikes as well.
Eikon 7y ago
Wether it’s right or not, likes are perceived as social validation. When a company is buying likes, not only this is not disclosed but also gives a false sense of approval by a community which is not only deceiving for the customers but also unfair competition for businesses providing a similar product / service.
reroute1 7y ago
> I would consider paid ads, paid likes, paid comments, etc., to be unethical if the content they're supporting is false. That's not a very useful statement. What if it's in support of an opinion? Advertisements are rarely just a list of facts and likes > TLDR: What's the difference between paying Facebook/Google/etc for an ad vs paying someone else to like your post? The 2nd seems like a better solution for a majority of people. The difference is pretty clear, one is purchasing a real ad on a real platform. The other is paying for fake interactions to project a false response to something.
- mattferderer 7y ago
  Don't know why you were downvoted but... > What if it's in support of an opinion? I think opinions are great if they state their claims and reasons in a respectful manner and don't throw out very false narratives on purpose. > ...real ad on a real platform. The other is paying for fake interactions to project a false response.. You're right. I'm jaded and feel I'm over advertised to on search engines, blogs & social media platforms. I feel they're shoved down your throat & ruin the quality of the platform. I feel a lot of ads or "sponsored posts" try their hardest to hide the fact that it's an ad. They often blur the lines of accurate claims. I don't even need to go down the route of "influencer" or "affiliate links" that hide it even more. At one time in my life, I felt there was a clear distinction between ads & authentic word of mouth promotion of an item. That was probably way back when TV blurred out logos. I haven't felt that way in a long time. I believe "real ad" is such a gray area these days that I am having a hard time seeing anything wrong with regular people making money off this advertisement hysteria instead of companies. Especially since most of the companies in question here are doing highly unethical things with their user's data. You can take the above paragraph & state 2 wrongs don't make a right or point out several fallacies made. At the end I would argue that the paid likes are only a small part of a larger problem of advertisements. Yes I would like to see paid likes become irrelevant but I think there are bigger issues.
- wolco 7y ago
  An ad is a message designed to force the user to hear a certain message. Hopefully invoke associations to other real things. A real ad is the same as a fake ad. They are all just ads. It doesn't matter who you pay. They do the same thing.
JohnFen 7y ago
> I have a hard time seeing the difference between paying for likes vs paying for ads from an ethical stand point. That's a bit like saying you don't see the difference between peeing in a toilet and peeing in someone's pool. You're relieving yourself either way, after all. "Likes" are supposed to represent the sentiment of the real users. Ads are supposed to be advertising messages. The two things are very different for a bunch of reasons. First, buying likes is straight up unethical because it's lying and gaming the system. Second, buying likes is harmful because it reduces the trustworthiness of likes.
- mattferderer 7y ago
  I think your argument is valid, especially when considering an ideal scenario for these platforms. Unfortunately, I haven't considered likes or even "star ratings" to be "real sentiment" in decades. Even without paid clicks, they rarely reflect quality and are often the result of many other factors. There are plenty of other dishonest methods to boost up your like value without paying for clicks.
  - JohnFen 7y ago
    > I haven't considered likes or even "star ratings" to be "real sentiment" in decades. Yes, these things are a prime example of "the tragedy of the commons". But your question was about ethics, and I don't think this affects the ethics of the decision. That the commons may be trashed doesn't make it ethical to contribute to the trashing yourself.
- wolco 7y ago
  Buying likes and buying ads are both ethical and unethical. By buying ads you are trying to game a users newsfeeds without providing any value to the user (if highly liked content provides value, ads do not provide this value). Buying likes is the same. It games a user's newsfeed but doesn't provide value. To the user they are the same. To facebook they unethical because they are not paying them. To the point around harmful the newsfeed itself is untrustworthy. Links were never trustworthy.

miohtama 7y ago

The difference is the disclosure. Only on the other you know that money is being used to affect your opinion on something.

mattferderer 7y ago
Excellent point. Though it can be easy to miss the tiny text that says "advertisement". I recall buying Facebook ads for places in the early days of their system that benefited off this & having it say which friends also liked this content.

nammi 7y ago

People expect that companies pay for their ads to be presented. A big reason for buying likes seems to be deceiving people into believing the posts aren't ads. I'd say it's similar to "sponsored content" that doesn't disclose the fact that it's sponsored

abcpassword 7y ago
I make some money via fake clicks. The promoted content is always obviously an ad, and is sometimes literally an ad.
ryandrake 7y ago
I think, at this point it is safe to assume that on any platform where individual content can be promoted via a crowdsourced upvote, including star ratings and "likes", much of what rises to the top is manipulated in some way, often sponsored (paid for) by a commercial interest. This includes FB posts and Amazon reviews, but also comments on reddit and even HN comments and articles. I would love to see internal reports from these companies about what % of each platform's accounts and/or activity they estimate to be automated, botted, farmed, fraudulent, etc. but for obvious reasons nobody seems to be willing to regularly publish this information!
- vonmoltke 7y ago
  Not percentages, but actual numbers of reports and suspicious account challenges: https://transparency.twitter.com/en/platform-manipulation.html https://transparency.twitter.com/en/platform-manipulation.ht...
  - ryandrake 7y ago
    I stand corrected. Great job, Twitter!
wolco 7y ago
People buy likes because of price and reach. If the price of ads and the reach were similiar this wouldn't exist. Who thought like would be a good gauge without dislke is beyond me. Dislike would provide a way to display displeasure and drop the value of the orginal like.
- JohnFen 7y ago
  > Dislike would provide a way to display displeasure and drop the value of the orginal like. And would double the business of the like factories, because they would expand into doing paid dislikes as well.

Eikon 7y ago

Wether it’s right or not, likes are perceived as social validation. When a company is buying likes, not only this is not disclosed but also gives a false sense of approval by a community which is not only deceiving for the customers but also unfair competition for businesses providing a similar product / service.

reroute1 7y ago

> I would consider paid ads, paid likes, paid comments, etc., to be unethical if the content they're supporting is false. That's not a very useful statement. What if it's in support of an opinion? Advertisements are rarely just a list of facts and likes > TLDR: What's the difference between paying Facebook/Google/etc for an ad vs paying someone else to like your post? The 2nd seems like a better solution for a majority of people. The difference is pretty clear, one is purchasing a real ad on a real platform. The other is paying for fake interactions to project a false response to something.

mattferderer 7y ago
Don't know why you were downvoted but... > What if it's in support of an opinion? I think opinions are great if they state their claims and reasons in a respectful manner and don't throw out very false narratives on purpose. > ...real ad on a real platform. The other is paying for fake interactions to project a false response.. You're right. I'm jaded and feel I'm over advertised to on search engines, blogs & social media platforms. I feel they're shoved down your throat & ruin the quality of the platform. I feel a lot of ads or "sponsored posts" try their hardest to hide the fact that it's an ad. They often blur the lines of accurate claims. I don't even need to go down the route of "influencer" or "affiliate links" that hide it even more. At one time in my life, I felt there was a clear distinction between ads & authentic word of mouth promotion of an item. That was probably way back when TV blurred out logos. I haven't felt that way in a long time. I believe "real ad" is such a gray area these days that I am having a hard time seeing anything wrong with regular people making money off this advertisement hysteria instead of companies. Especially since most of the companies in question here are doing highly unethical things with their user's data. You can take the above paragraph & state 2 wrongs don't make a right or point out several fallacies made. At the end I would argue that the paid likes are only a small part of a larger problem of advertisements. Yes I would like to see paid likes become irrelevant but I think there are bigger issues.
wolco 7y ago
An ad is a message designed to force the user to hear a certain message. Hopefully invoke associations to other real things. A real ad is the same as a fake ad. They are all just ads. It doesn't matter who you pay. They do the same thing.

JohnFen 7y ago

> I have a hard time seeing the difference between paying for likes vs paying for ads from an ethical stand point. That's a bit like saying you don't see the difference between peeing in a toilet and peeing in someone's pool. You're relieving yourself either way, after all. "Likes" are supposed to represent the sentiment of the real users. Ads are supposed to be advertising messages. The two things are very different for a bunch of reasons. First, buying likes is straight up unethical because it's lying and gaming the system. Second, buying likes is harmful because it reduces the trustworthiness of likes.

mattferderer 7y ago
I think your argument is valid, especially when considering an ideal scenario for these platforms. Unfortunately, I haven't considered likes or even "star ratings" to be "real sentiment" in decades. Even without paid clicks, they rarely reflect quality and are often the result of many other factors. There are plenty of other dishonest methods to boost up your like value without paying for clicks.
- JohnFen 7y ago
  > I haven't considered likes or even "star ratings" to be "real sentiment" in decades. Yes, these things are a prime example of "the tragedy of the commons". But your question was about ethics, and I don't think this affects the ethics of the decision. That the commons may be trashed doesn't make it ethical to contribute to the trashing yourself.
wolco 7y ago
Buying likes and buying ads are both ethical and unethical. By buying ads you are trying to game a users newsfeeds without providing any value to the user (if highly liked content provides value, ads do not provide this value). Buying likes is the same. It games a user's newsfeed but doesn't provide value. To the user they are the same. To facebook they unethical because they are not paying them. To the point around harmful the newsfeed itself is untrustworthy. Links were never trustworthy.