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Click farms: a shadowy internet industry is booming in China

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Re: Click farms: a shadowy internet industry is booming in China

#81

Post by Merrill »

wpietri wrote: post #7

There was a reply here, now dead, that I wanted to discuss: "Hey man, I'm just trying to feed my family. I have kids so that means I can behave however I want so long as it benefits my kids. And rather than trust some reviews on a platform anyone can sign up for, how about you do some reading on the app developer and their ToS and Privacy Policy." I'm adamantly opposed to spam, and back in the early days of the web (…

It's the Game of Life. People play it according to whatever rules and penalties they perceive to be in place using whatever strategies and tactics they think will succeed.

Re: Click farms: a shadowy internet industry is booming in China

#83

Post by danielscrubs »

jmkni wrote: post #75
danielscrubs wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that really a big problem? I mean, Apple would take a 30% cut AND you'd have to put the money in the bank first which would make it traceable if I'm not missing something?

It's pretty common for scam artists to con people into buying Google Play/Apple gift cards, so I guess that would get around the first part.

Aha, ok, that would explain it. Thanks!

Re: Click farms: a shadowy internet industry is booming in China

#84

Post by rightbyte »

Merrill wrote: post #81
wpietri wrote: post #7

There was a reply here, now dead, that I wanted to discuss: "Hey man, I'm just trying to feed my family. I have kids so that means I can behave however I want so long as it benefits my kids. And rather than trust some reviews on a platform anyone can sign up for, how about you do some reading on the app developer and their ToS and Privacy Policy." I'm adamantly opposed to spam, and back in the early days of the web (…

It's the Game of Life. People play it according to whatever rules and penalties they perceive to be in place using whatever strategies and tactics they think will succeed.

And they have the wrong tactic and strategy? That they do it becouse they think it benefits them is obvoius.

These schemes to make money without doing ordinary boring dull work are ofent a waste of time if you compare your hourly wage to whatever you would get carrying bags of seed up the hill to the sawmill.

A programmer that is competent enough to write spamscripts is competent enough to work as a programmer.

Re: Click farms: a shadowy internet industry is booming in China

#85

Post by tomp »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #40
dmix wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You had me until the part you suggested there was some subset of the upper class conspiring to keep an underclass of poor people... in order to make/keep themselves rich?Wouldn't rich people get much richer if there was more economically healthy middle class people buying their products and real estate or w/e they are making money off of? What could they possibly gain from ruining the economy and keeping others poor.…

The extremely rich do in fact conspire to keep wages low and economic security precarious, for both political and economic reasons. There's plenty of historical evidence for this. For example: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2007/aug/28/commen... The counterargument is that the massive increases in wealth inequality since the 50s - a time when the average single wage earner could afford a relatively secure…

> The counterargument is that the massive increases in wealth inequality since the 50s - a time when the average single wage earner could afford a relatively secure lifestyle - "just happened", which is obviously rather implausible.

It's not that implausible. It's the effect of technology - not just automation / computers (only since 90s or something) but also before, we had information technology - ever since the telegraph was invented. In simple terms, it enables ever-increasing scale of human cooperation, bigger countries, bigger companies etc. so the "winners" (smartest, most experienced, most educated, most corrupt, most sociopathic, most networked, or simply those with a better starting point) win ever more, at a bigger scale.

Re: Click farms: a shadowy internet industry is booming in China

#86

Post by rightbyte »

trilila wrote: post #62
wpietri wrote: post #7

There was a reply here, now dead, that I wanted to discuss: "Hey man, I'm just trying to feed my family. I have kids so that means I can behave however I want so long as it benefits my kids. And rather than trust some reviews on a platform anyone can sign up for, how about you do some reading on the app developer and their ToS and Privacy Policy." I'm adamantly opposed to spam, and back in the early days of the web (…

I live in a certain east European country, where the excuse for petty and serious crime is always: "Hey man, I'm just trying to feed my family.". People doing this, and those tolerating it, don't realise that this type of behaviour leads to a bad reputation for that country, and in turn to loss of business. Believing that poverty is a valid justification for continuous shady / criminal work is a fallacy. Specifically…

If you speak a small language reviews might still be valuable for everything but restaurants. I have not noticed any systematic spam reviews in neither swedish nor danish.

The problem with restaurants, being an overall shady business, is probably that way too many customers are too easy to please or hard to please, so the reviews doesn't say much.

Re: Click farms: a shadowy internet industry is booming in China

#87

Post by noragami »

rightbyte wrote: post #86
trilila wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in a certain east European country, where the excuse for petty and serious crime is always: "Hey man, I'm just trying to feed my family.". People doing this, and those tolerating it, don't realise that this type of behaviour leads to a bad reputation for that country, and in turn to loss of business. Believing that poverty is a valid justification for continuous shady / criminal work is a fallacy. Specifically…

If you speak a small language reviews might still be valuable for everything but restaurants. I have not noticed any systematic spam reviews in neither swedish nor danish. The problem with restaurants, being an overall shady business, is probably that way too many customers are too easy to please or hard to please, so the reviews doesn't say much.

I don't speak any languages with less than a couple hundred million speakers, so I find salvation in some of the smaller, more niche communities, preferably with invite-only registration process, or simply less well known.

Increasing popularity never made anything better.

Re: Click farms: a shadowy internet industry is booming in China

#88

Post by tomp »

vpears87 wrote: post #29
dmix wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You had me until the part you suggested there was some subset of the upper class conspiring to keep an underclass of poor people... in order to make/keep themselves rich?Wouldn't rich people get much richer if there was more economically healthy middle class people buying their products and real estate or w/e they are making money off of? What could they possibly gain from ruining the economy and keeping others poor.…

Wealth is relative to others in society. If the pie grows, I maybe better off in absolute dollars. But if the percentage of the pie I control decreases, I am relatively poorer. Comparing how much wealthier/happier/successful/beautiful I am to my previous self is niether as satisfying nor as real as comparing to those immediately around me. I also wouldn't think a conspiracy is necessary. Just lobby to write tax, tari…

That is a self-defeatist view that encourages and amplifies the "hate the rich" sentiments in the society.

1 of 5 children of John D Rockefeller (richest man in history) died at 13 months. In the past 130 years, child mortality has decreased massively in the developed world. If that's not "real" or "satisfying" and the only achievement that truly fulfils you is beating other people, that's a fairly sad life to live.

Re: Click farms: a shadowy internet industry is booming in China

#89

Post by throwaway2048 »

mruts wrote: post #77
rfrey wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe enough that you’d have to mow your own damn lawn. Sign me up.

Maybe you want to make your own clothes as well?

Are you suggesting that people should be kept poor so you can get cheap clothes?

Re: Click farms: a shadowy internet industry is booming in China

#90

Post by social_quotient »

marak830 wrote: post #43
wpietri wrote: post #7

There was a reply here, now dead, that I wanted to discuss: "Hey man, I'm just trying to feed my family. I have kids so that means I can behave however I want so long as it benefits my kids. And rather than trust some reviews on a platform anyone can sign up for, how about you do some reading on the app developer and their ToS and Privacy Policy." I'm adamantly opposed to spam, and back in the early days of the web (…

Just before my son was born, I was struggling to find a stable job. So I worked on online web dev jobs for some seriously shady characters. I made between 10 and 15 sites that they would buy databases and mass mail users in various industries to try and get them to sign up for really shitty programs. (One for example was a roofing company promising 100's of clients). The amount of work I did on the back end to track…

So how different is this from CRO, form abandonment, tracking, and advanced user analytics?

I get the sense that if it pays really well and is for a large company it’s not often judged, in fact it’s amazing, but if it’s for a smaller company with a less clear business model then it seems shady?

How do we sure that up? In our technical morality brains?

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