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I created a fake business and bought it an online reputation

fusion.net

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Re: I created a fake business and bought it an online reputation

#71

Post by wlesieutre »

josefresco wrote: post #63
m12k wrote: post #13

"Facebook says it uses pattern recognition to find and eliminate click farms and accounts that exist solely to like pages. Since March, says Facebook, it’s “notified 200,000 Pages that we’ve protected their accounts from fake likes.” I love the way they put this: “Protected,” as if the companies hadn’t paid for them." This may be more accurate than the author of this article believes. I've read elsewhere that precise…

"Protected" might be more accurate than you think initially. One of the first things that happens when blackhat SEO experts discover a "penalty" mechanism, is they will attempt to invoke it upon their competition. Google deals with this re:bad links. Once they started penalizing, it became a new tactic to suppress competition.

And if they don't penalize for it, then it's a 0-risk proposition to try buying thousands of links just in case a few of them sneak by and boost your rank. What do you have to lose?

But like you said, Google doesn't know who paid for them, so if they penalize spam links you can use that against competitors. There's no good solution other than "Be 100% perfect at identifying and ignoring fake links."

Re: I created a fake business and bought it an online reputation

#72

Post by philbarr »

"My sudden surge in popularity raised no flags at Twitter headquarters as far as I could tell, even though many of the followers had egg avatars who hadn’t tweeted in years."

I'm not sure that Twitter could use how often you tweet as a metric. I haven't tweeted anything in years either but I still use the service to see what my favourite people are saying. I'm sure there are plenty of lurkers like me.

Re: I created a fake business and bought it an online reputation

#73

Post by throwaway23545 »

WA wrote: post #4

That was a good write-up. Thing is, this works. Even (or especially) for startups. Only if to kickstart the hype a bit. Real followers and likes will follow, but let's be honest here: Who doesn't automatically trust a business that has 19K Twitter followers and a few good reviews out there? From the article: And these days, which is more real: a fake business with a real website or a brick and mortar business with no…

I think it's the reverse that's more insidious. Who doesn't automatically distrust a business with just 24 likes?

Creates a situation where you almost have to buy some fakes to get to perception neutrality where real likes will follow.

Re: I created a fake business and bought it an online reputation

#74

Post by nkrisc »

rajadigopula wrote: post #47

I have been on Fiverr for few weeks and ordered two articles for $5 from some guy claiming from the US. The result was hilarious; a kindergarten kid can use much better grammar. Also found some gigs encouraging piracy, found a guy who claims to give 3 ebooks ( you name it) for $5 ?! Another one who can give you any 3 Udemy courses download for $5 - https://uk.fiverr.com/udemy_guru/give-you-any-4-u-demy-cours... I thi…

> I think Fiverr should hire a team to monitor the activity and authenticity of its sellers.

That would cause most of their revenue to evaporate.

Re: I created a fake business and bought it an online reputation

#75

Post by dethstar »

wanderfowl wrote: post #70

If you're a street musician setting up to play with an open instrument case, it's pretty important to "seed the pot" by throwing a few dollars and some change into the case. Not because you make any money from your own "donation", but because it shows passers-by what the arrangement is, and adds an element of social pressure ("Somebody donated, so I should too!"). I can see this as similar. There's something pathetic…

Homeless do the opposite of the musician really, throw a coin/bill into their glass and they will take it out and save it somewhere else.

"Nobody has donated, have some compassion" works for some.

Re: I created a fake business and bought it an online reputation

#76

Post by degenerate »

nkrisc wrote: post #74
rajadigopula wrote: post #47

I have been on Fiverr for few weeks and ordered two articles for $5 from some guy claiming from the US. The result was hilarious; a kindergarten kid can use much better grammar. Also found some gigs encouraging piracy, found a guy who claims to give 3 ebooks ( you name it) for $5 ?! Another one who can give you any 3 Udemy courses download for $5 - https://uk.fiverr.com/udemy_guru/give-you-any-4-u-demy-cours... I thi…

> I think Fiverr should hire a team to monitor the activity and authenticity of its sellers. That would cause most of their revenue to evaporate.

They also don't have a "report this post" button anywhere to allow people to flag spam or illegal activity. That would at least be something they could do...

Re: I created a fake business and bought it an online reputation

#77

Post by ska »

dethstar wrote: post #75
wanderfowl wrote: post #70

If you're a street musician setting up to play with an open instrument case, it's pretty important to "seed the pot" by throwing a few dollars and some change into the case. Not because you make any money from your own "donation", but because it shows passers-by what the arrangement is, and adds an element of social pressure ("Somebody donated, so I should too!"). I can see this as similar. There's something pathetic…

Homeless do the opposite of the musician really, throw a coin/bill into their glass and they will take it out and save it somewhere else. "Nobody has donated, have some compassion" works for some.

They often (usually?) will leave some small change though.

Panhandlers are common targets of theft, which may explain stashing most of what they get in various places less exposed.

Re: I created a fake business and bought it an online reputation

#78

Post by TomGullen »

A lot of this problem seems to come from Facebook/Twitter showing:

"You have 3 followers"

Perhaps it would be better if they showed publicly facing ranges:

  -
Then above 10,000 (or whatever) it shows the actual number.

I see these fake like paid services losing a ton of business if social platforms took this approach.

Re: I created a fake business and bought it an online reputation

#79

Post by vijayr »

Yes, writing fake reviews is illegal. False advertising is a misdemeanor crime

Does this mean those Amazon affiliate sites are illegal too? A lot of these sites review products as if they have used the them, but there is no way they could've paid real money for the dozens of products they review?

Also, how is this different from celebrities endorsing products and appearing in ads? How do we know they bothered to use the product even once, other than the time they were shooting for the ad?

Re: I created a fake business and bought it an online reputation

#80

Post by puranjay »

wanderfowl wrote: post #70

If you're a street musician setting up to play with an open instrument case, it's pretty important to "seed the pot" by throwing a few dollars and some change into the case. Not because you make any money from your own "donation", but because it shows passers-by what the arrangement is, and adds an element of social pressure ("Somebody donated, so I should too!"). I can see this as similar. There's something pathetic…

I tried this with a blog I used to run. Back when RSS subsriber count actually mattered, I faked the subscribe button to show that I had 15,984 subscribers instead of 134.

I would get just 1 subscriber every day earlier. After the change, I started getting 3 a day with the same traffic.

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