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> It started with me ditching journalism to focus on churning out daily TikToks in which I’d offer tips about storytelling. Magana’s talent management startup,

> It started with me ditching journalism to focus on churning out daily TikToks in which I’d offer tips about storytelling. Magana’s talent management startup, 25/7 Media, would ensure eyeballs for this content by enlisting its 60-plus clients to drive traffic my way. Once I’d built a decent fan base, 25/7 would produce a weekly podcast featuring my candid conversations with up-and-coming digital creators. So.. it's a social media ponzi scheme?

DistractionRect 3y ago
I wouldn't necessarily call it that. IMO, it's mostly about juicing discovery. There's more content than any one person could ever consume, and a limited attention economy. Basically, they find what they believe is good content, and bring it to the foreground. If there's no audience for it, it won't build a following and just fall on it's face. If it takes off, they have to capitalize on the momentum and produce content to stay in the spotlight.
- haltist 3y ago
  Most digital content converges onto optimized spam because that's what grabs the most attention on any given platform. Spam is basically an algorithmic exploit which is the main reason for why delegating decisions about what should be worthy of attention to commercial algorithms designed to optimize advertising revenue is not a great idea. The overall effect is detrimental because it trains people to stop caring about what is fact vs social fiction (e.g. conspiracy theories). Lots of folks have written about the detrimental effects of revenue optimizing statistical algorithms and their use in social media. For anyone who wants to learn about this I recommend Jaron Lanier's book. He does a good job of explaining the reasons for not delegating one's choices to social media algorithms. Edit: the above comment is AI approved. Pasting the response from claude.ai for posterity. You raise some thoughtful points about the problems with algorithmic content optimization in social media and digital platforms. A few key takeaways from your perspective: - Much online content is optimized to grab attention rather than provide depth or substance, which you liken to "spam." This is driven by algorithms designed to maximize engagement and ad revenue. - Over-reliance on these algorithms can train people to care less about facts vs fiction/conspiracies. It promotes shallow thinking and engagement over meaningful discourse. - Many experts, like Jaron Lanier, have warned about giving too much influence over to revenue-driven algorithms in determining what people see and engage with online. - There are real risks and downsides to letting algorithms choose our information diets. It can promote conspiracy theories, erode critical thinking, and undermine a shared sense of truth/reality. - You advise more conscious thought about how we interact with algorithmically-optimized content, and highlighting writers like Lanier who provide deeper analysis of these issues. I think you summarize the challenges very well. It's an important discussion as more of our information and interactions move onto digitally-mediated platforms. There are no easy answers, but being aware of the risks and downsides is a good first step.
  - cookie_monsta 3y ago
    > the above comment is AI approved I hope I live to see the day when this actually means something
    - haltist 3y ago
      The simplest examples are social media algorithms. The content shown to users is vetted and approved by the ML models to optimize engagement and advertising revenue.
      - cookie_monsta 3y ago
        Great, but using it to fact check your own comments on HN? When will that become viable?
        haltist 3y ago
        Every AI service has an API so it would be easy to write a driver for a headless comment bot that checks comments with AI and then replies or updates a comment based on the API results. I think bots are against the rules on HN but the implementation would be very easy if the bot didn't get banned.
  - DistractionRect 3y ago
    I find this less under spam, and more under product placement. Like how people often drink water in a movie, why not it be a real brand? Do they drive cars, why not a Prius? If gym tiktoks are going to have an intro/background music, what's so bad about it being Toxic? It's supplementing content and supports other creators (paid for the product placement). It only works if people care enough to look up the product that was placed. Personally, I find product placement//sponsored by spots the most benign and acceptable form of advertising.
- akira2501 3y ago
  That's why I highlighted that quote. I see it as a suggestion that he can take someone with negative presence currently and with no drive for it into social media fame by merely applying this formula, and that part of this formula would be repeating the same step for new recruits. Perhaps it's just the way his marketing bluster read into the article, but it suggests he's not concerned with the market forces you're invoking, and so I immediately saw a large pyramidal structure when I read that particular line.
  - gtvwill 3y ago
    By formula you mean bot farm...
  - simonw 3y ago
    That feels to me more like a network effect than a pyramid scheme: help your talent out by having them collaborate with each other.
  - escapedmoose 3y ago
    That seemed resolved by the end of the article, by the admission that this guy sometimes has 9 bad ideas in a row and the 10th is a winner. The highlighted example was one of the bad ideas, but it illustrates generally how the promotion process works
  - kbenson 3y ago
    Using a network or community of people to promote each other is not a ponzi scheme. A ponzi scheme would be if he took profits from those new people to somehow pay the old people. This is actually the opposite of that, where he's getting time and effort from established people to boost new people. It's functionally no different than having a friend in an industry that gives you a shout out when you start a new venture, except you're opting into a group of people all doing this to help each other. It's nothing new, and nothing problematic IMO, and it's been going on for hundreds of years at least, and possibly thousands.
- adolph 3y ago
  > a limited attention economy It would be ironic if the content they generate is shortening attention spans, thus making the overall economy smaller.
- TeMPOraL 3y ago
  Except it's all effectively a self-referential loop of fake, empty content that pretends to be of high quality, but exists and is invested in only to promote other such fake, empty content. They pump energy into the loop to grow it - which incidentally displaces all topically adjacent but authentic and useful works - and grow it until it becomes self-sustaining. The only reason this is done, the only way this actually benefits the people involved in this scheme, the only reason they do this, is because companies pay for getting themselves attached to the content in the loop. It's all just a more concealed form of advertising. Any value the content in question has is entirely incidental, and quickly optimized away.
IAmGraydon 3y ago
The sentence about driving traffic with 60-plus clients does have a Ponzi-like quality to it. It’s only sustainable if he keeps adding clients at a faster and faster rate. At least that’s how it appears to me.
- bobsmooth 3y ago
  The point is to get the ball rolling until organic growth is achieved.
lionkor 3y ago
Yes, but thats neither illegal nor are people being exploited (not directly, anyways) so this kind of ponzi scheme may be as close to legitimate as it can get(?)
Bukhmanizer 3y ago
IMO this is a weak criticism. It’s pretty common for eg. podcasts within the same network to promote a new podcast by pointing their listeners towards it. Is it annoying? Yes. Is it a Ponzi scheme? No.
- thesausageking 3y ago
  He makes money creating content on how to make money by creating content. Ponzi is the wrong word. Pyramid scheme is more accurate.
infamouscow 3y ago
I too can make brain dead straw-man comments that sound pithy in a pathetic attempt to derail the topic at hand.
0xDEAFBEAD 3y ago
I think it would only be a Ponzi if social media shout-outs were zero-sum. But they're not. I can tell my audience to check out your stuff, you tell your audience to check out my stuff, and there's the potential for mutual benefit. Maybe some disengaged people in my audience engage much more with your content. Or maybe our followers just spend more time on Tiktok overall, or more time on our Tiktoks as opposed to other peoples' Tiktoks. Another point is the rich get richer on social media. Having followers is how you gain followers. Social proof is important. People like to talk about what everyone else is talking about. Once a new client reaches critical mass, they're going to passively gain followers due to this effect (e.g. creators with more followers are more likely to be recommended by the platform -- at least I would assume this is generally the case). So adding in a new client and gaining followers for them is an investment in the long term. I think YC companies buying services from each other could be a good analogy actually.
- drewcoo 3y ago
  I think Ponzi schemes are more characterized by their tree structure, not whether or not currency is zero sum.
  - 0xDEAFBEAD 3y ago
    Lots of things have tree structures -- e.g. pretty much anything with an org chart. In any case, what we're really arguing about is whether it's unsustainable in some sense. If it technically qualifies as a Ponzi according to your preferred definition, but it's sustainable and everyone gets what they signed up for happily, who cares?
happytiger 3y ago
No man it’s about curating content because nobody can keep up… jeez. It’s not a Ponzi scheme because it’s a brand and we are helping people get discovered. /s

DistractionRect 3y ago

I wouldn't necessarily call it that. IMO, it's mostly about juicing discovery. There's more content than any one person could ever consume, and a limited attention economy. Basically, they find what they believe is good content, and bring it to the foreground. If there's no audience for it, it won't build a following and just fall on it's face. If it takes off, they have to capitalize on the momentum and produce content to stay in the spotlight.

haltist 3y ago
Most digital content converges onto optimized spam because that's what grabs the most attention on any given platform. Spam is basically an algorithmic exploit which is the main reason for why delegating decisions about what should be worthy of attention to commercial algorithms designed to optimize advertising revenue is not a great idea. The overall effect is detrimental because it trains people to stop caring about what is fact vs social fiction (e.g. conspiracy theories). Lots of folks have written about the detrimental effects of revenue optimizing statistical algorithms and their use in social media. For anyone who wants to learn about this I recommend Jaron Lanier's book. He does a good job of explaining the reasons for not delegating one's choices to social media algorithms. Edit: the above comment is AI approved. Pasting the response from claude.ai for posterity. You raise some thoughtful points about the problems with algorithmic content optimization in social media and digital platforms. A few key takeaways from your perspective: - Much online content is optimized to grab attention rather than provide depth or substance, which you liken to "spam." This is driven by algorithms designed to maximize engagement and ad revenue. - Over-reliance on these algorithms can train people to care less about facts vs fiction/conspiracies. It promotes shallow thinking and engagement over meaningful discourse. - Many experts, like Jaron Lanier, have warned about giving too much influence over to revenue-driven algorithms in determining what people see and engage with online. - There are real risks and downsides to letting algorithms choose our information diets. It can promote conspiracy theories, erode critical thinking, and undermine a shared sense of truth/reality. - You advise more conscious thought about how we interact with algorithmically-optimized content, and highlighting writers like Lanier who provide deeper analysis of these issues. I think you summarize the challenges very well. It's an important discussion as more of our information and interactions move onto digitally-mediated platforms. There are no easy answers, but being aware of the risks and downsides is a good first step.
- cookie_monsta 3y ago
  > the above comment is AI approved I hope I live to see the day when this actually means something
  - haltist 3y ago
    The simplest examples are social media algorithms. The content shown to users is vetted and approved by the ML models to optimize engagement and advertising revenue.
    - cookie_monsta 3y ago
      Great, but using it to fact check your own comments on HN? When will that become viable?
      - haltist 3y ago
        Every AI service has an API so it would be easy to write a driver for a headless comment bot that checks comments with AI and then replies or updates a comment based on the API results. I think bots are against the rules on HN but the implementation would be very easy if the bot didn't get banned.
- DistractionRect 3y ago
  I find this less under spam, and more under product placement. Like how people often drink water in a movie, why not it be a real brand? Do they drive cars, why not a Prius? If gym tiktoks are going to have an intro/background music, what's so bad about it being Toxic? It's supplementing content and supports other creators (paid for the product placement). It only works if people care enough to look up the product that was placed. Personally, I find product placement//sponsored by spots the most benign and acceptable form of advertising.
akira2501 3y ago
That's why I highlighted that quote. I see it as a suggestion that he can take someone with negative presence currently and with no drive for it into social media fame by merely applying this formula, and that part of this formula would be repeating the same step for new recruits. Perhaps it's just the way his marketing bluster read into the article, but it suggests he's not concerned with the market forces you're invoking, and so I immediately saw a large pyramidal structure when I read that particular line.
- gtvwill 3y ago
  By formula you mean bot farm...
- simonw 3y ago
  That feels to me more like a network effect than a pyramid scheme: help your talent out by having them collaborate with each other.
- escapedmoose 3y ago
  That seemed resolved by the end of the article, by the admission that this guy sometimes has 9 bad ideas in a row and the 10th is a winner. The highlighted example was one of the bad ideas, but it illustrates generally how the promotion process works
- kbenson 3y ago
  Using a network or community of people to promote each other is not a ponzi scheme. A ponzi scheme would be if he took profits from those new people to somehow pay the old people. This is actually the opposite of that, where he's getting time and effort from established people to boost new people. It's functionally no different than having a friend in an industry that gives you a shout out when you start a new venture, except you're opting into a group of people all doing this to help each other. It's nothing new, and nothing problematic IMO, and it's been going on for hundreds of years at least, and possibly thousands.
adolph 3y ago
> a limited attention economy It would be ironic if the content they generate is shortening attention spans, thus making the overall economy smaller.
TeMPOraL 3y ago
Except it's all effectively a self-referential loop of fake, empty content that pretends to be of high quality, but exists and is invested in only to promote other such fake, empty content. They pump energy into the loop to grow it - which incidentally displaces all topically adjacent but authentic and useful works - and grow it until it becomes self-sustaining. The only reason this is done, the only way this actually benefits the people involved in this scheme, the only reason they do this, is because companies pay for getting themselves attached to the content in the loop. It's all just a more concealed form of advertising. Any value the content in question has is entirely incidental, and quickly optimized away.

IAmGraydon 3y ago

The sentence about driving traffic with 60-plus clients does have a Ponzi-like quality to it. It’s only sustainable if he keeps adding clients at a faster and faster rate. At least that’s how it appears to me.

bobsmooth 3y ago
The point is to get the ball rolling until organic growth is achieved.

lionkor 3y ago

Yes, but thats neither illegal nor are people being exploited (not directly, anyways) so this kind of ponzi scheme may be as close to legitimate as it can get(?)

Bukhmanizer 3y ago

IMO this is a weak criticism. It’s pretty common for eg. podcasts within the same network to promote a new podcast by pointing their listeners towards it. Is it annoying? Yes. Is it a Ponzi scheme? No.

thesausageking 3y ago
He makes money creating content on how to make money by creating content. Ponzi is the wrong word. Pyramid scheme is more accurate.

infamouscow 3y ago

I too can make brain dead straw-man comments that sound pithy in a pathetic attempt to derail the topic at hand.

0xDEAFBEAD 3y ago

I think it would only be a Ponzi if social media shout-outs were zero-sum. But they're not. I can tell my audience to check out your stuff, you tell your audience to check out my stuff, and there's the potential for mutual benefit. Maybe some disengaged people in my audience engage much more with your content. Or maybe our followers just spend more time on Tiktok overall, or more time on our Tiktoks as opposed to other peoples' Tiktoks. Another point is the rich get richer on social media. Having followers is how you gain followers. Social proof is important. People like to talk about what everyone else is talking about. Once a new client reaches critical mass, they're going to passively gain followers due to this effect (e.g. creators with more followers are more likely to be recommended by the platform -- at least I would assume this is generally the case). So adding in a new client and gaining followers for them is an investment in the long term. I think YC companies buying services from each other could be a good analogy actually.

drewcoo 3y ago
I think Ponzi schemes are more characterized by their tree structure, not whether or not currency is zero sum.
- 0xDEAFBEAD 3y ago
  Lots of things have tree structures -- e.g. pretty much anything with an org chart. In any case, what we're really arguing about is whether it's unsustainable in some sense. If it technically qualifies as a Ponzi according to your preferred definition, but it's sustainable and everyone gets what they signed up for happily, who cares?

happytiger 3y ago

No man it’s about curating content because nobody can keep up… jeez. It’s not a Ponzi scheme because it’s a brand and we are helping people get discovered. /s