3 ms·

Long but absolutely worth the read. People in other countries with much lower costs of living are essentially working full time to post meaningless crap to Face

Long but absolutely worth the read. People in other countries with much lower costs of living are essentially working full time to post meaningless crap to Facebook, because the “creator” payouts from Facebook, while tiny by U.S. standards, are meaningful sums in these other countries. And this has in turn spawned “how to get rich quick” influencer content which itself is also monetized the same way, as well as pretty sophisticated software to automate it all. This story has surprisingly altered the way I feel about this AI spam on Facebook. While it’s disconcerting and annoying content to look at… I have to give props to these folks for finding clever ways to suck money out of lazy rich tech companies. Respect for the international hustle. The part of the ecosystem missing from this story is the revenue stream to Facebook. Are advertisers actually ok with their ads showing up next to this crap, and getting charged by Facebook for the privilege? Maybe? Not all ads are run by big conservative image-conscious consumer companies. If ads get real clicks, maybe that’s enough for some advertisers, regardless of how silly the AI content next door.

ToucanLoucan 2y ago
I mean there's always an advertiser ready to advertise on your site. Low-rent ads have been a staple of the internet experience since there was an internet. I remember crawling music piracy websites as a young lad (satirically in the video game minecraft) and seeing all kinds of horrendous shit advertised. Pills that make your dick bigger, hot russian singles in my area, y'all know the rest. Twitter's had a remarkable fall from grace in this particular regard, what with it once being very normal to find extremely high-budget and noteworthy products advertised there, to now being almost 100% grift in one form or another: crypto, AI shlock, NFTs, the works. That said I will say, having grown up with that culture as a part of me, when I see websites that roll ads like those, it definitely makes me much more apprehensive about engaging with them, especially in commerce. So it might well be true that there is always an advertiser ready to advertise, but in so doing, people pay attention to what you're willing to put up next to your content and judge your site/platform accordingly.
pants2 2y ago
I despise all platforms with "creator payouts." Influencers churning out hyper-optimized slop will flood your platform and drown out real creators who are actually posting original content. If you do manage to post good content, expect 100s of bots to repost your stuff endlessly and steal what little earnings you might've had.
- myaccountonhn 2y ago
  Genuine creators earning a living from these platforms also get punished for not putting the exact content the algorithm has deemed the people want to see. Friend of mine who works as an influencer was condemned to forever record herself putting things on a shelf, since any other content she made wouldn't even be shown. I think about that when I see some streamers who get famous for playing a certain game. If they play anything else, it doesn't generate the same buzz so they are just stuck playing the same game for hours on end. Feels like a miserable job imo.

ToucanLoucan 2y ago

I mean there's always an advertiser ready to advertise on your site. Low-rent ads have been a staple of the internet experience since there was an internet. I remember crawling music piracy websites as a young lad (satirically in the video game minecraft) and seeing all kinds of horrendous shit advertised. Pills that make your dick bigger, hot russian singles in my area, y'all know the rest. Twitter's had a remarkable fall from grace in this particular regard, what with it once being very normal to find extremely high-budget and noteworthy products advertised there, to now being almost 100% grift in one form or another: crypto, AI shlock, NFTs, the works. That said I will say, having grown up with that culture as a part of me, when I see websites that roll ads like those, it definitely makes me much more apprehensive about engaging with them, especially in commerce. So it might well be true that there is always an advertiser ready to advertise, but in so doing, people pay attention to what you're willing to put up next to your content and judge your site/platform accordingly.

pants2 2y ago

I despise all platforms with "creator payouts." Influencers churning out hyper-optimized slop will flood your platform and drown out real creators who are actually posting original content. If you do manage to post good content, expect 100s of bots to repost your stuff endlessly and steal what little earnings you might've had.

myaccountonhn 2y ago
Genuine creators earning a living from these platforms also get punished for not putting the exact content the algorithm has deemed the people want to see. Friend of mine who works as an influencer was condemned to forever record herself putting things on a shelf, since any other content she made wouldn't even be shown. I think about that when I see some streamers who get famous for playing a certain game. If they play anything else, it doesn't generate the same buzz so they are just stuck playing the same game for hours on end. Feels like a miserable job imo.