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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

#131

Post by la_barba »

cageface wrote: post #125
la_barba wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are the powerless people the parasites? Google (and also others) is not a morally neutral entity here. They created this problem. They could stem the flow of malvertising or click-farming or spamming by hiring more and more review staff as their company has scaled, but its simply not in their DNA. I mean literally they are the richest of the richest of companies in the richest country and their owners are amongst…

They’re not powerless. They’ve simply made the economic decision that it’s more profitable for them to cheat the system then work within it. I’m not making a value judgement here. And so far Google etc have decided it’s better to tolerate this to some extent than spend the money to eradicate it, which is often the pragmatic choice.

>They’ve simply made the economic decision that it’s more profitable for them to cheat the system then work within it.

Well, a private company created an arbitrary system with arbitrary rules to make them gobs of cash, and now the entire world should "work within it"? Why? Personally I don't run an ad-blocker out of principle, so maybe I'm a bit more sensitive than the average person here since I get exposed to this garbage everyday.

Google also wants to "cheat" the system by not hiring any actual humans to actually make sure that people aren't tricked with ads for dick pills with heavy metals or protein power that is toxic or ads about payday loans or whatever other crazy scam-ads people run. Google wants to automate everything and leave the rest of us wading in this garbage. How about hiring people to fix the mess they created instead of stuffing their pockets? I'm only mentioning Google here, but I don't want to necessarily single them out, all of the web advertising platforms are responsible in someway or another. Its just that Google is an easy target since they are the largest ...

>I’m not making a value judgement here.

Um.. I believe the use of word parasite precludes you from making any such claim :)

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

#132

Post by lazyjones »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #122
lazyjones wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Things like click farming do extract wealth, but they increase systemic waste, meaning less value can be produced. That in turn increases the amount of desperation, making people more likely to join them in doing something exploitative just to survive. Perhaps these click farms are just an evolving reaction to the PITA that is online advertising. It's the advertising industry that gets harmed by it and not some oth…

Advertisers pass their costs onto their customers. Everyone is hurt by fraud.

> Everyone is hurt by fraud.

No, the users aren't. The advertisers are, they evaluate the performance of their advertising and find it less worthwhile as fraud increases.

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

#133

Post by dang »

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 (…

> There was a reply here, now dead, that I wanted to discuss

If there's a comment that's [dead] that shouldn't be, you should vouch for it by clicking on its timestamp and then clicking 'vouch' at the top of its page. When enough users vouch for a comment, it is restored to visibility. That's why the comment you're talking about is now visible (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20495142), albeit also downvoted.

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

#134

Post by dang »

skunkpocalypse wrote: post #55

> I'm curious No you're not curious. You're sarcastic. And a wanker.

We've banned this account for breaking the site guidelines and posting unsubstantive comments. Please don't create accounts to do that with on HN. It eventually gets your main account banned as well.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#135

Post by wpietri »

dang wrote: post #133
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 (…

> There was a reply here, now dead, that I wanted to discuss If there's a comment that's [dead] that shouldn't be, you should vouch for it by clicking on its timestamp and then clicking 'vouch' at the top of its page. When enough users vouch for a comment, it is restored to visibility. That's why the comment you're talking about is now visible ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20495142 ), albeit also downvoted.

Noted, thanks! I thought maybe it was dead for some other reason, but in the future I'll just try to resurrect it.

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

#136

Post by dang »

wpietri wrote: post #135
dang wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There was a reply here, now dead, that I wanted to discuss If there's a comment that's [dead] that shouldn't be, you should vouch for it by clicking on its timestamp and then clicking 'vouch' at the top of its page. When enough users vouch for a comment, it is restored to visibility. That's why the comment you're talking about is now visible ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20495142 ), albeit also downvoted.

Noted, thanks! I thought maybe it was dead for some other reason, but in the future I'll just try to resurrect it.

Users have more power to do that than they think they do! It's really a feature for community moderation, and probably the single most salutary thing we've added to the site in the last five years.

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

#137

Post by 1PlayerOne »

arethuza wrote: post #52
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning." Warren Buffet

make total sense, I mean who has the time and money to organize for a class war. What is surprising is that a lot of the stupid poor are fighting on side of the rich people who are keeping them poor. Sad!
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