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> I wonder what the internet would really look like if there was no bot traffic, fake clicks, and fake accounts. In an economy where the only thing that matter
by Nextgrid 4y ago
> I wonder what the internet would really look like if there was no bot traffic, fake clicks, and fake accounts.
In an economy where the only thing that matters is actual money there wouldn't be any bots - after all I don't see bots queuing up to buy stuff. This is a problem the bullshit advertising and "growth & engagement" industry brought on themselves. If you pay people to click on stuff, they're gonna click it, tell others to click or build machines to click.
- lovich 4y agoThere are definitely bots to buy things. Finance alone does a fuck ton of automation to buy things at far faster reaction speeds than possible and then there’s the eBay/Amazon/whatever online retail bots that exist to scoop up in demand items to then flip
- Nextgrid 4y agoBots that buy things only do so to address a temporary inefficiency in the market - they won't work perpetually and you can argue their actions do provide value.
- lovich 4y agoIf the bots continually outpace the majority of humanity’s purchasing ability does that mean they don’t exist or do they pass some capitalist Turing test? I asked on behalf of all the bots checking for semantic values on social media and then drop shipping unique /s shirts. I’d link things like this[1] but I can’t be sure you’ll see the same thing I’m linking because they are constantly mutating. We have to accept the fact that algorithms have reached the tech level of convincing a double digit percentage of humanity to do what the algorithm wants because that is what is current reality [1] https://newyorkshirtcompany.com/products/queens-are-born-in-june-10-reasons-shirt-50-off-for-bday-girls-flat-shipping?currency=USD&utm_medium=cpc&utm_source=google&utm_campaign=Google%20Shopping&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIz9v8yNOO-QIVGgaICR1vCwPGEAQYAiABEgL86vD_BwE https://newyorkshirtcompany.com/products/queens-are-born-in-...
- pyinstallwoes 4y agoNow who’s putting the token into who?
- SamBam 4y agoIt's in the actual-money economy as well. That was the point of the article. Anytime you have thousands of versions of things to sell (Amazon) you're going to need a ranking mechanism. And ranking mechanisms can be gamed by bots and other tricks.
- spaceman_2020 4y agoBots don't buy stuff, but bots can push human persuasion triggers. Something with 10,000 positive reviews on Amazon feels like a much better buy than something with 2 reviews.