10 ms·

Influencer cartels manipulate social media

193 points by zolbrek 2y ago

yieldcrv 2y ago
this is like a decade late to notice this technique, but, yes, that market has matured a bit more since then, but mostly in the size of the budgets
- syndicatedjelly 2y ago
  Was there research a decade ago describing how these cartels work?
  - rgrieselhuber 2y ago
    Observations can be made without research.
    - jl6 2y ago
      Indeed, early observations and unproven hypotheses are part of how we decide whether something is worth researching in the first place.
bcheung 2y ago
A lot of these social media promotions work by having people with high follower counts blast you out and try to get their followers to follow you. The problem is that it is not an audience that would normally be interested in or engage in your content naturally. There are often artificial incentives to follow or engage in someone's content. Often there is some kind of prize giveaway from a "celebrity", that you have to follow everyone on a list to qualify. That celebrity then gets paid to blast out the promotion. Then after the promotion all of a sudden your massive number of new followers aren't engaging with your content anymore. What are the algorithms going to assume now? Naturally that your content is no longer any good. It's common for influencers to share screenshots of their analytics or publish them on their websites for people looking for influencers. While the numbers might look impressive, unfortunately, due to how the algorithms work -- mainly things like vector embeddings and placing influencers in a some high dimensional space, the algorithms no longer target and recommend your content to an audience that would be interested. It used to be that brands would look at your follower count and see how many likes / comments you were getting, but even this is faked now. As your engagement (likes / comments as a percentage of your followers) goes down, they are sometimes artificially propped up by purchasing likes and comments. This worsens your engagement and leads to an endless downward cycle. While someone might survive for a short while as an influencer using these black hat strategies, brands will be unlikely to use you again if they have not seen tangible results. Also, if you intend to sell a product or have a certain ideal customer avatar you are trying to market to, it makes sense to do as much as you can to get engagement from that (and only that) demographic. Follower counts might look impressive on the surface but what ultimately matters is whether you see conversions for your business / brand.
- bcheung 2y ago
  Also, I really wish social media platforms provided better tools and didn't have policies that penalized you for deleting followers that are bots or junk followers. As a Las Vegas photographer that works primarily with models, I often have random profiles blasting out my work. These profiles mostly find sexy content and blast it out in hopes of growing their own profiles. This mostly resulted in my followers being 95% men from outside the US. This does absolutely nothing for increasing my engagement with my actual target audience (female models or would be models in the Las Vegas metro area wanting to book photoshoots). Unfortunately Instagram penalizes you and has actually removed the search functionality from my follower list because I was using it to delete bots and junk followers. They won't say this officially but their support ignores my requests for why this functionality no longer works.
  - nerdponx 2y ago
    Bot accounts prop up their KPIs and they directly provide revenue. They have clear incentives to allow such bots and junk accounts to thrive on their platform.
    - bcheung 2y ago
      This makes perfect sense. If people were getting more organic business conversions they wouldn't pay for advertising as much.
  - csomar 2y ago
    > but their support ignores my requests for why this functionality no longer works I laud your optimism that you think you'll be able to get an answer to this.
  - burnte 2y ago
    > policies that penalized you for deleting followers that are bots or junk followers I'm totally unaware of this, can you elaborate?
- jongjong 2y ago
TeMPOraL 2y ago
Basically, swindlers swindling swindlers. Advertising industry is not some paragon of ethics; it shouldn't be surprised that people who deceive others for a living will use the same techniques within industry as they use on regular people.
- resource_waste 2y ago
  I'm not sure why mind-control is alright. High pressure sales through social pressure is a real thing. Blue Bubbles, I'm looking at you.
alexhackhack 2y ago
manipulate and influence are similar. So why are people offended? Influencers get paid for influencing/manipulating people. You now got the concept. If that upsets you, you are kind of slow.
- quantified 2y ago
  I wonder if you are downvoted for the last two snarky sentences or the entire comment. The business model is similar to payola. The companies who are marketing via influencers would probably collude to drive up prices to the degree they could, that is why there are so many laws around that area of commerce. As far as influencers go, it's sort of a weird space. Imagine the popular kids in high school selling Mary Kay or Amway out of their lockers.
  - meowster 2y ago
    upset ≠ not understanding something
nequo 2y ago
Figure 1 in this post, showing algorithmically enforced collusion in the cartel, is shocking to me as someone who hasn't spent any time on Instagram. The authors of the blog post describe their analysis in detail in the "companion paper" on arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.10231 https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.10231
TheAceOfHearts 2y ago
I sometimes see certain memes related to some corporate content pick up a ton of traction online and can't help but wonder if they're organic or manufactured. Spreading subtle ads through memes is probably still an under-explored area of marketing and it bypasses modern ad-blocking techniques. The way I learned of Invincible was through a couple memes, which eventually lead me to research and watch the series. To give a concrete example of another trend: a few years back there was this group trend on TikTok of going to the theater dressed up in a suit to watch some animated movie. You would only need to pay a couple of large accounts to engage in this trend, and then others will follow along because they want to fit in. Another dimension through which content marketing will probably expand in the future is by creating media that encourages people to take sides and engage in discussions, like Giant Monkey vs Giant Reptile, who wins? This trend is very popular within the political landscape, but it could probably be twisted for fictional IPs as well.
- localfirst 2y ago
  ex) r/video, Youtube Shorts peddling dropship temu crap
- piyuv 2y ago
  Invincible is really cool though
  - LudwigNagasena 2y ago
    Not sure whether this comment is organic or manufactured.
    - ASalazarMX 2y ago
      It's completely organic, such as mine, where I also express that Invincible is really cool.
      - foobar1962 2y ago
        Exactly what a manufactured comment would say. /s
tamimio 2y ago
This has existed since the whole ‘influencer’ phenomenon began, particularly on social media. I recall reading an article in 2014 about how Samsung allegedly spread slander against HTC. It’s the reason why I don’t rely on YouTube for reviews, tutorials, or anything beyond pure entertainment or documentaries. It seems that everyone is compensated in one way or another. In fact, monetization is the reason why social media has devolved into this state.
- resource_waste 2y ago
  But... you can't imply that Apple has astroturfers on HN. lmao, I think HN is in-on-it. Or maybe dang is an Apple believer.
  - ericd 2y ago
    Eh if you looked around silicon valley 5/10/15 years ago, Apple had basically won among the programmers and founders there. So they wouldn't really need astroturfers here.
    - resource_waste 2y ago
      No no no You don't get to just say 'you wouldn't need them'. This is wishful thinking. 'Apple won' because of the marketing.
      - dualogy 2y ago
        I remember it differently. There was a sudden onslaught of bewilderingly techie-appealing novelties out of Cupertino in the 2006-2008 time window: unibody notebooks, iOS/iPhone, the MacBook Air, Intel CPUs in their computers (of great interest back then to whoever compiles software), and the macOS X version 10.5 "Leopard" that introduced (or surfaced) built-in common Unix command-line tools and unixy shell. Back then, in the overall hardware & OS landscape of the day, on here — all that stuff happening nearly-at-once / ongoingly was marketing itself all by itself.
TrackerFF 2y ago
I've noticed that in my hobby (guitar), all the influencers will release the same equipment reviews at the exact same time. They often refer to each other, and do co-labs. Lots of "my buddy" referrals, so to speak... As for the first point, that's just how marketing works these days. All the big influencers will get the equipment weeks before, test it out, and make reviews with the clause that they can't say anything about it until the agreed time. It of course feels highly coordinated, and those new releases absolutely dominate the social media, when the release/drop happens. Then all the smaller influencers will feed off that, and drop their own reviews the next days / weeks, or whenever they get the equipment. At one point, one starts to think - is it all authentic, or just made-up stuff to increase views, affiliate sales, etc. (This, of course, pales in comparison to the teen/beauty/etc. influencers, that will band together in a shared house, create PR friendships purely to pump up numbers, etc.)
- candiddevmike 2y ago
  > At one point, one starts to think - is it all authentic, or just made-up stuff to increase views, affiliate sales, etc. I've always gone the opposite. At what point was any of this authentic?
- knallfrosch 2y ago
  Shipping pre-production test devices is a long-established practise that predates the influencer era by decades. Critics view movies before their release. Tech products are shipped to tech publications beforehand. Journalists have access to many press releases before they're published and on and on. The benefits for those involved are clear: Sources get a coordinated press storm. Sources can restrict access to flattering publications. The publications can "instantly" release an in-depth review and beat their competition. It's "only" all consumers who lose out. A free market might provide independent reviewers with a chance to beat the selected few on quality.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > Shipping pre-production test devices is a long-established practise that predates the influencer era by decades The critics had brands and reputations. The side effect of having so many critics, now, is they've become commoditised. I know every influencer believes they have a brand. But for the most part they're generic (within a category) to the algorithms that decide whether they're surfaced or not. We're closer to the Cambrian explosion of the late 19th century, at the dawn of mass marketing and snake-oil salesmen, than the broadcast era we're leaving behind.
knallfrosch 2y ago
> Influencer cartels can improve consumer welfare if they expand social media engagement to the target audience > Back-of-the-envelope calculations (based on regression analysis) show that if advertisers pay for cartel engagement as if it were natural engagement, they receive only 3–18% of the value with general cartels, and 60–85% with topic cartels. First, users don't benefit from cartel engagement at all. The authors have forgotten to factor in opportunity costs of 100%. A "85% good" engagement that pushes a 100% engagement from my feed costs me 15%. This is plainly obvious by, well, the need to form a cartel in the first place. Second, the authors define both good engagement and topic cartels by comment similarity. You can't get any other result other than that topic cartels beat general cartels. Third, the column uses stuffy language. Write clearly and you spot mistakes such as one and two more easily. Fourth, as a regular app user I regard everything influencer-shilled as negative welfare – but that's just my opinion.
autoexec 2y ago
> If a cartel generates engagement from influencers with other interests (meat lovers), this hurts consumers and advertisers. It hurts consumers because the platform will show them irrelevant content, and advertisers are hurt because their ads are shown to the wrong audience. Even when the content is relevant it still hurts consumers because ads are manipulation, and supports a system of invasive spying that gets used for things far outside of the scope of advertising, and because it only shows consumers what influencers are paid to push/shill for with zero consideration to other things like the quality of those products/services, and because it only encourages the "filter bubble" problem where the obsession over targeting audiences causes people to be exposed to an artificially narrow subset of what is available. The best thing for consumers would be if people with online platforms honestly and transparently promoted a highly diverse range of products (including people) that they themselves genuinely like and are interested in.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
Havoc 2y ago
The whole setup also rewards influencers with questionable moral compasses. One of the ones I’m following is trying to find sponsors that pay a their workers a fair wage. Self imposed requirements like that murder the size pool of potential sponsor matches. So what do you tell them? Lower your ethical standards to pay rent? Entire setup has crappy incentive alignment
caseyy 2y ago
Everyone is trying to manipulate everything. It’s the age of grift. Go on any social media website and you’ll be used as means to an end in many ways: ads will be shown to you for ad revenue, you will be tracked so your data can be sold, the platforms will expose you to content that drives addiction, and to content that aligns with their politics. On top of that, influencers will try to sell their sponsor’s products through parasocial relationships with you. In between all that, dark patterns will mislead you to buy more subscriptions, and community guidelines will commodify any social interaction you desire into an ad-friendly non-controversial synthetic content. All that will be used to train an LLM or two, potentially stealing your art and your career. Your data will eventually leak and your identity will be used as means to an end on the black market, to enable further grifts like identity theft, phishing and scamming. And if you dare have any other monetizable human desires, like dating, they will be monetized even if they never needed to be. And the money everyone made from you will be used to lobby against you. All to ensure the next generation — your kids — is exploited as means to an end more effectively, from a younger age. And just in case there isn’t enough grift and someone comes up with a new method, EULAs can change without notice at any time to enshittify the grift more. It’s just layers of grift modeled around a minimum viable products. It’s grift on grift on grift… all the way down.
- PM_me_your_math 2y ago
  [dead]
boxed 2y ago
The world is turning into Two Moments of Invention by every day. http://matthewhemming.ca/cheeseburger_brown/stories/Two_Moments_of_Invention.html http://matthewhemming.ca/cheeseburger_brown/stories/Two_Mome...
yakorevivan 2y ago
[dead]
t0bia_s 2y ago
Gerald Undone made video addressing issue of influencers and camera industry recently. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7c4ZbBzqK0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7c4ZbBzqK0
PM_me_your_math 2y ago
[dead]
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
thenerdhead 2y ago
I feel like this has existed for all of the early influencers who continue to peddle their mediocre NYT mostly self-help bestsellers. Probably even to name a name, something that Ryan Holiday infamously wrote about early in his publishing career. I knew a person who did some type of manipulation for their TikTok up to 550k followers in 2020-2021. They would average maybe 2k views a video(thus horrible engagement), but they would dupe many advertisers for thousands of dollars to "reach 550k followers" by peddling all sorts of useless products. I believe this pattern is very rampant in social media and heavily manipulated, especially today for stuff nobody wants to buy but platforms are pushing consumerism/advertising. I wrote a book on how ridiculous social media is nowadays called "Enough". If anyone wants a free copy, feel free to send me an email.
ashleygh 2y ago
Research, Findings, Results and Reviews from clients in-need of the Best Hacker has shown that Smoothspykings delivers the best mix of web filtering, Location tracking and App management, particularly on iOS devices, Android Devices and Windows and Forensic Hire a Hacker Services includes such as access to Facebook chats, WhatsApp messages, Instagram Messages, Tinder messages, Phone texts, call logs, browser history, recover deleted files and chat history, gallery folder, GPS locations. This has shown that they delivers the best Hacking Services. Over the last few years Smoothspykings has shown exceptional performance and precision when carrying out a penetration test. CONTACT THEM ON ; smoothspykings @gmail com

193 points by zolbrek 2y ago

this is like a decade late to notice this technique, but, yes, that market has matured a bit more since then, but mostly in the size of the budgets

syndicatedjelly 2y ago
Was there research a decade ago describing how these cartels work?
- rgrieselhuber 2y ago
  Observations can be made without research.
  - jl6 2y ago
    Indeed, early observations and unproven hypotheses are part of how we decide whether something is worth researching in the first place.

bcheung 2y ago

A lot of these social media promotions work by having people with high follower counts blast you out and try to get their followers to follow you. The problem is that it is not an audience that would normally be interested in or engage in your content naturally. There are often artificial incentives to follow or engage in someone's content. Often there is some kind of prize giveaway from a "celebrity", that you have to follow everyone on a list to qualify. That celebrity then gets paid to blast out the promotion. Then after the promotion all of a sudden your massive number of new followers aren't engaging with your content anymore. What are the algorithms going to assume now? Naturally that your content is no longer any good. It's common for influencers to share screenshots of their analytics or publish them on their websites for people looking for influencers. While the numbers might look impressive, unfortunately, due to how the algorithms work -- mainly things like vector embeddings and placing influencers in a some high dimensional space, the algorithms no longer target and recommend your content to an audience that would be interested. It used to be that brands would look at your follower count and see how many likes / comments you were getting, but even this is faked now. As your engagement (likes / comments as a percentage of your followers) goes down, they are sometimes artificially propped up by purchasing likes and comments. This worsens your engagement and leads to an endless downward cycle. While someone might survive for a short while as an influencer using these black hat strategies, brands will be unlikely to use you again if they have not seen tangible results. Also, if you intend to sell a product or have a certain ideal customer avatar you are trying to market to, it makes sense to do as much as you can to get engagement from that (and only that) demographic. Follower counts might look impressive on the surface but what ultimately matters is whether you see conversions for your business / brand.

bcheung 2y ago
Also, I really wish social media platforms provided better tools and didn't have policies that penalized you for deleting followers that are bots or junk followers. As a Las Vegas photographer that works primarily with models, I often have random profiles blasting out my work. These profiles mostly find sexy content and blast it out in hopes of growing their own profiles. This mostly resulted in my followers being 95% men from outside the US. This does absolutely nothing for increasing my engagement with my actual target audience (female models or would be models in the Las Vegas metro area wanting to book photoshoots). Unfortunately Instagram penalizes you and has actually removed the search functionality from my follower list because I was using it to delete bots and junk followers. They won't say this officially but their support ignores my requests for why this functionality no longer works.
- nerdponx 2y ago
  Bot accounts prop up their KPIs and they directly provide revenue. They have clear incentives to allow such bots and junk accounts to thrive on their platform.
  - bcheung 2y ago
    This makes perfect sense. If people were getting more organic business conversions they wouldn't pay for advertising as much.
- csomar 2y ago
  > but their support ignores my requests for why this functionality no longer works I laud your optimism that you think you'll be able to get an answer to this.
- burnte 2y ago
  > policies that penalized you for deleting followers that are bots or junk followers I'm totally unaware of this, can you elaborate?
jongjong 2y ago

TeMPOraL 2y ago

Basically, swindlers swindling swindlers. Advertising industry is not some paragon of ethics; it shouldn't be surprised that people who deceive others for a living will use the same techniques within industry as they use on regular people.

resource_waste 2y ago
I'm not sure why mind-control is alright. High pressure sales through social pressure is a real thing. Blue Bubbles, I'm looking at you.

alexhackhack 2y ago

manipulate and influence are similar. So why are people offended? Influencers get paid for influencing/manipulating people. You now got the concept. If that upsets you, you are kind of slow.

quantified 2y ago
I wonder if you are downvoted for the last two snarky sentences or the entire comment. The business model is similar to payola. The companies who are marketing via influencers would probably collude to drive up prices to the degree they could, that is why there are so many laws around that area of commerce. As far as influencers go, it's sort of a weird space. Imagine the popular kids in high school selling Mary Kay or Amway out of their lockers.
- meowster 2y ago
  upset ≠ not understanding something

nequo 2y ago

Figure 1 in this post, showing algorithmically enforced collusion in the cartel, is shocking to me as someone who hasn't spent any time on Instagram. The authors of the blog post describe their analysis in detail in the "companion paper" on arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.10231 https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.10231

TheAceOfHearts 2y ago

I sometimes see certain memes related to some corporate content pick up a ton of traction online and can't help but wonder if they're organic or manufactured. Spreading subtle ads through memes is probably still an under-explored area of marketing and it bypasses modern ad-blocking techniques. The way I learned of Invincible was through a couple memes, which eventually lead me to research and watch the series. To give a concrete example of another trend: a few years back there was this group trend on TikTok of going to the theater dressed up in a suit to watch some animated movie. You would only need to pay a couple of large accounts to engage in this trend, and then others will follow along because they want to fit in. Another dimension through which content marketing will probably expand in the future is by creating media that encourages people to take sides and engage in discussions, like Giant Monkey vs Giant Reptile, who wins? This trend is very popular within the political landscape, but it could probably be twisted for fictional IPs as well.

localfirst 2y ago
ex) r/video, Youtube Shorts peddling dropship temu crap
piyuv 2y ago
Invincible is really cool though
- LudwigNagasena 2y ago
  Not sure whether this comment is organic or manufactured.
  - ASalazarMX 2y ago
    It's completely organic, such as mine, where I also express that Invincible is really cool.
    - foobar1962 2y ago
      Exactly what a manufactured comment would say. /s

tamimio 2y ago

This has existed since the whole ‘influencer’ phenomenon began, particularly on social media. I recall reading an article in 2014 about how Samsung allegedly spread slander against HTC. It’s the reason why I don’t rely on YouTube for reviews, tutorials, or anything beyond pure entertainment or documentaries. It seems that everyone is compensated in one way or another. In fact, monetization is the reason why social media has devolved into this state.

resource_waste 2y ago
But... you can't imply that Apple has astroturfers on HN. lmao, I think HN is in-on-it. Or maybe dang is an Apple believer.
- ericd 2y ago
  Eh if you looked around silicon valley 5/10/15 years ago, Apple had basically won among the programmers and founders there. So they wouldn't really need astroturfers here.
  - resource_waste 2y ago
    No no no You don't get to just say 'you wouldn't need them'. This is wishful thinking. 'Apple won' because of the marketing.
    - dualogy 2y ago
      I remember it differently. There was a sudden onslaught of bewilderingly techie-appealing novelties out of Cupertino in the 2006-2008 time window: unibody notebooks, iOS/iPhone, the MacBook Air, Intel CPUs in their computers (of great interest back then to whoever compiles software), and the macOS X version 10.5 "Leopard" that introduced (or surfaced) built-in common Unix command-line tools and unixy shell. Back then, in the overall hardware & OS landscape of the day, on here — all that stuff happening nearly-at-once / ongoingly was marketing itself all by itself.

TrackerFF 2y ago

I've noticed that in my hobby (guitar), all the influencers will release the same equipment reviews at the exact same time. They often refer to each other, and do co-labs. Lots of "my buddy" referrals, so to speak... As for the first point, that's just how marketing works these days. All the big influencers will get the equipment weeks before, test it out, and make reviews with the clause that they can't say anything about it until the agreed time. It of course feels highly coordinated, and those new releases absolutely dominate the social media, when the release/drop happens. Then all the smaller influencers will feed off that, and drop their own reviews the next days / weeks, or whenever they get the equipment. At one point, one starts to think - is it all authentic, or just made-up stuff to increase views, affiliate sales, etc. (This, of course, pales in comparison to the teen/beauty/etc. influencers, that will band together in a shared house, create PR friendships purely to pump up numbers, etc.)

candiddevmike 2y ago
> At one point, one starts to think - is it all authentic, or just made-up stuff to increase views, affiliate sales, etc. I've always gone the opposite. At what point was any of this authentic?
knallfrosch 2y ago
Shipping pre-production test devices is a long-established practise that predates the influencer era by decades. Critics view movies before their release. Tech products are shipped to tech publications beforehand. Journalists have access to many press releases before they're published and on and on. The benefits for those involved are clear: Sources get a coordinated press storm. Sources can restrict access to flattering publications. The publications can "instantly" release an in-depth review and beat their competition. It's "only" all consumers who lose out. A free market might provide independent reviewers with a chance to beat the selected few on quality.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > Shipping pre-production test devices is a long-established practise that predates the influencer era by decades The critics had brands and reputations. The side effect of having so many critics, now, is they've become commoditised. I know every influencer believes they have a brand. But for the most part they're generic (within a category) to the algorithms that decide whether they're surfaced or not. We're closer to the Cambrian explosion of the late 19th century, at the dawn of mass marketing and snake-oil salesmen, than the broadcast era we're leaving behind.

knallfrosch 2y ago

> Influencer cartels can improve consumer welfare if they expand social media engagement to the target audience > Back-of-the-envelope calculations (based on regression analysis) show that if advertisers pay for cartel engagement as if it were natural engagement, they receive only 3–18% of the value with general cartels, and 60–85% with topic cartels. First, users don't benefit from cartel engagement at all. The authors have forgotten to factor in opportunity costs of 100%. A "85% good" engagement that pushes a 100% engagement from my feed costs me 15%. This is plainly obvious by, well, the need to form a cartel in the first place. Second, the authors define both good engagement and topic cartels by comment similarity. You can't get any other result other than that topic cartels beat general cartels. Third, the column uses stuffy language. Write clearly and you spot mistakes such as one and two more easily. Fourth, as a regular app user I regard everything influencer-shilled as negative welfare – but that's just my opinion.

autoexec 2y ago

> If a cartel generates engagement from influencers with other interests (meat lovers), this hurts consumers and advertisers. It hurts consumers because the platform will show them irrelevant content, and advertisers are hurt because their ads are shown to the wrong audience. Even when the content is relevant it still hurts consumers because ads are manipulation, and supports a system of invasive spying that gets used for things far outside of the scope of advertising, and because it only shows consumers what influencers are paid to push/shill for with zero consideration to other things like the quality of those products/services, and because it only encourages the "filter bubble" problem where the obsession over targeting audiences causes people to be exposed to an artificially narrow subset of what is available. The best thing for consumers would be if people with online platforms honestly and transparently promoted a highly diverse range of products (including people) that they themselves genuinely like and are interested in.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

Havoc 2y ago

The whole setup also rewards influencers with questionable moral compasses. One of the ones I’m following is trying to find sponsors that pay a their workers a fair wage. Self imposed requirements like that murder the size pool of potential sponsor matches. So what do you tell them? Lower your ethical standards to pay rent? Entire setup has crappy incentive alignment

caseyy 2y ago

Everyone is trying to manipulate everything. It’s the age of grift. Go on any social media website and you’ll be used as means to an end in many ways: ads will be shown to you for ad revenue, you will be tracked so your data can be sold, the platforms will expose you to content that drives addiction, and to content that aligns with their politics. On top of that, influencers will try to sell their sponsor’s products through parasocial relationships with you. In between all that, dark patterns will mislead you to buy more subscriptions, and community guidelines will commodify any social interaction you desire into an ad-friendly non-controversial synthetic content. All that will be used to train an LLM or two, potentially stealing your art and your career. Your data will eventually leak and your identity will be used as means to an end on the black market, to enable further grifts like identity theft, phishing and scamming. And if you dare have any other monetizable human desires, like dating, they will be monetized even if they never needed to be. And the money everyone made from you will be used to lobby against you. All to ensure the next generation — your kids — is exploited as means to an end more effectively, from a younger age. And just in case there isn’t enough grift and someone comes up with a new method, EULAs can change without notice at any time to enshittify the grift more. It’s just layers of grift modeled around a minimum viable products. It’s grift on grift on grift… all the way down.

PM_me_your_math 2y ago
[dead]

boxed 2y ago

The world is turning into Two Moments of Invention by every day. http://matthewhemming.ca/cheeseburger_brown/stories/Two_Moments_of_Invention.html http://matthewhemming.ca/cheeseburger_brown/stories/Two_Mome...

yakorevivan 2y ago

[dead]

t0bia_s 2y ago

Gerald Undone made video addressing issue of influencers and camera industry recently. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7c4ZbBzqK0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7c4ZbBzqK0

PM_me_your_math 2y ago

[dead]

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

thenerdhead 2y ago

I feel like this has existed for all of the early influencers who continue to peddle their mediocre NYT mostly self-help bestsellers. Probably even to name a name, something that Ryan Holiday infamously wrote about early in his publishing career. I knew a person who did some type of manipulation for their TikTok up to 550k followers in 2020-2021. They would average maybe 2k views a video(thus horrible engagement), but they would dupe many advertisers for thousands of dollars to "reach 550k followers" by peddling all sorts of useless products. I believe this pattern is very rampant in social media and heavily manipulated, especially today for stuff nobody wants to buy but platforms are pushing consumerism/advertising. I wrote a book on how ridiculous social media is nowadays called "Enough". If anyone wants a free copy, feel free to send me an email.

ashleygh 2y ago

Research, Findings, Results and Reviews from clients in-need of the Best Hacker has shown that Smoothspykings delivers the best mix of web filtering, Location tracking and App management, particularly on iOS devices, Android Devices and Windows and Forensic Hire a Hacker Services includes such as access to Facebook chats, WhatsApp messages, Instagram Messages, Tinder messages, Phone texts, call logs, browser history, recover deleted files and chat history, gallery folder, GPS locations. This has shown that they delivers the best Hacking Services. Over the last few years Smoothspykings has shown exceptional performance and precision when carrying out a penetration test. CONTACT THEM ON ; smoothspykings @gmail com