An epidemic of fake influencers and the death of meritocracy • Hacker News Board

Re: An epidemic of fake influencers and the death of meritocracy

#141

Post by mikekchar » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 6:53 AM UTC

nilskidoo wrote: post #99

ip26 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Marketing isn't intrinsically evil. The positive side, for example, might be showing people how great switching to wireless headphones is going to be, (justifying the expense) and then hey what do you know these really are awesome! Marketing at its best is helping people see how a product fills a need or makes their life better in a way that might not have been clear at first.

If people honestly wanted or needed a particular thing, then marketing would be irrelevant. We've been manufacturing demand to meet supply for decades now. It is fundamentally a disingenuous act.

You seriously want a Hunky Bill's Perogie Maker. The only reason you don't know that you want one is because you didn't grow up in Winnipeg. But trust me. You want one. It's a shame that you will read this on HN and you will dismiss it as a stupid joke and you almost certainly won't go out and order a Hunky Bill's Perogie Maker -- all because you didn't watch 100's of hours of cartoons on Saturday mornings in Winnipeg (or probably you'd be good in Regina or even Calgary... I'm not sure).

Yeah, it's crazy, but there is something noble about letting people know that there is good stuff that can help them in ways that they can't imagine yet. It's doubly good if that helps you run a business that makes a truly useful product.

I don't know anything about Hunky Bill (I just noticed he lived in Vancouver! WTH... Can I really trust him?) But that perogie maker. Yep. Good as gold.

Re: An epidemic of fake influencers and the death of meritocracy

#142

Post by baroffoos » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 6:59 AM UTC

jondubois wrote: post #128

It's also the same with open source work. You need social connections to big influencers or successful startups in order for your project to get popular. The main channel seems to be Twitter; that's where open source projects tend to be shared and a lot. I barely use my Twitter account so I was very lucky that one of my projects became popular (over 5K stars on GitHub now). It's a general purpose back end framework.…

No you don't lol. I created a brand new reddit account and posted my OSS project on /r/linux and it was on the top for a while with almost 2k votes. I didn't spend any time marketing or finding influences I just dumped a link and it was shared all over the place because people thought it was cool.

Re: An epidemic of fake influencers and the death of meritocracy

#143

Post by gsich » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 7:05 AM UTC

mettamage wrote: post #133

kstenerud wrote: post #120

This is basically a repeat of SEO. At first, you have the early adopters. Things grow organically and it doesn't feel like a zero-sum game because there aren't many players. Next comes the growth phase, where more people get involved, and start competing for attention/clicks/votes/whatever points system. Next comes the exploiters, who discover weaknesses in the system and take advantage of them. They tend to make a l…

This is such a good overview, I feel that an academic version of this idea should be given in software development 101 classes.

product life cycle?

Re: An epidemic of fake influencers and the death of meritocracy

#144

Post by keymone » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 7:07 AM UTC

kristianc wrote: post #140

Jedi72 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a deeper truth that marketing people (like yourself I am guessing?) don't want to admit: what you do is wrong. To it's very core. You're attempting to take away people's free will, using the dirtiest tactics one could imagine. Emotional manipulation, exploiting peoples insecurities, their need to feel a certain level of status from their peers: these are staple tactics of a marketer, and social media influen…

> https://youtu.be/_86qb7hlbJI says it all (only 50 second long and very funny, be sure to check out his other stuff - comedy is usually greatest when its saying something true). Let me guess, Bill Hicks, right? Anyway, this is a straw man of what marketing actually is. Marketing is the process of finding out what a customer wants and finding the most efficient way to deliver it. What you've described is advertising.

Marketing is never about finding what customer wants, it’s about making customer want a thing marketer wants to sell.

Re: An epidemic of fake influencers and the death of meritocracy

#145

Post by omginternets » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 7:14 AM UTC

Jedi72 wrote: post #92

CptFribble wrote: post #76

Apologies if this is too meta, but all the claims of "ugh so glad I don't care about social media" and "what do influencers am I right????" feel really, really disingenuous on a forum run by a silicon valley incubator, where discussions of building products that run on advertisements regularly take place. I think there's a deeper truth that most people, including us here on HN, don't want to admit: humans are at not…

There is a deeper truth that marketing people (like yourself I am guessing?) don't want to admit: what you do is wrong. To it's very core. You're attempting to take away people's free will, using the dirtiest tactics one could imagine. Emotional manipulation, exploiting peoples insecurities, their need to feel a certain level of status from their peers: these are staple tactics of a marketer, and social media influen…

Two things:

1. You're putting a lot of very different things in the same bag. Marketing is not advertising, and all advertising is not unethical.

2. I don't know where you work, but I'm willing to bet you're making a living because advertisers are pushing a product or service you build/direct.

If you're going to make this kind of blanket statement, you should at least follow its implications all the way to the endpoint.

Re: An epidemic of fake influencers and the death of meritocracy

#146

Post by raxxorrax » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 7:16 AM UTC

CptFribble wrote: post #76

Apologies if this is too meta, but all the claims of "ugh so glad I don't care about social media" and "what do influencers am I right????" feel really, really disingenuous on a forum run by a silicon valley incubator, where discussions of building products that run on advertisements regularly take place. I think there's a deeper truth that most people, including us here on HN, don't want to admit: humans are at not…

> humans are at not rational

Thank god! I think we got lucky there...

I agree with influencers making a difference and we see something analogous to buying clicks here. This will distort perception further. Fringe topics will suddenly seem to be important to lot of (fake) people. This will distort perception heavily.

Re: An epidemic of fake influencers and the death of meritocracy

#147

Post by luckylion » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 7:17 AM UTC

cortesoft wrote: post #74

esotericn wrote: post #47

The use of the term "merit" in this context feels fraught with issue. One could say that, almost by definition, the individual with the most ability to game the system has the highest merit. If a poker player is able to read the opponents' faces where no-one else can - they win based on merit. The losers may well disclaim this as being some sort of 'hack'. We are speaking here about some pictures on a small, rectangu…

So would you say the same about a poker player who marked cards with invisible ink that only he can see with his special glasses? You seem to be arguing that there is no such thing as cheating unless you get caught.

Which is also what I'm hearing from the article. "I've done it, but now I've stopped doing it, and everybody who still does it is bad and cheating". Sounds like "yeah, market manipulation is terrible and evil, and now that I've made my millions from doing it, we should all stop" to me.

Re: An epidemic of fake influencers and the death of meritocracy

#148

Post by r_c_a_d » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 7:18 AM UTC

fre3k wrote: post #121

Jedi72 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a deeper truth that marketing people (like yourself I am guessing?) don't want to admit: what you do is wrong. To it's very core. You're attempting to take away people's free will, using the dirtiest tactics one could imagine. Emotional manipulation, exploiting peoples insecurities, their need to feel a certain level of status from their peers: these are staple tactics of a marketer, and social media influen…

Free will is an illusion.

I feel strongly compelled to disagree with you...

Re: An epidemic of fake influencers and the death of meritocracy

#149

Post by luckylion » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 7:22 AM UTC

conanbatt wrote: post #96

jrochkind1 wrote: post #71

The OP is suggesting that some "influencers" who get paid to say/show they like something on instagram are "fake" because... they mislead the people who pay them about how many 'followers' they have? But other people are more "authentically" doing paid product placement, still without necessarily disclosing that to those they "influence"? I am unimpressed. It sounds like they're saying that only some people truly hav…

As an advertiser, you are definitely getting defrauded.

Are you though? It's your job to find the right "influencer" and make sure that they can deliver what you're after. If you're unsure about the realness of their followers, just put some form of tracking into the contract. For every 100 clicks on the link, they get whatever money.

If all you look at are follower counts and then throw your money at them, you're just bad at your job.

Re: An epidemic of fake influencers and the death of meritocracy

#150

Post by raxxorrax » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 7:22 AM UTC

omginternets wrote: post #145

Jedi72 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a deeper truth that marketing people (like yourself I am guessing?) don't want to admit: what you do is wrong. To it's very core. You're attempting to take away people's free will, using the dirtiest tactics one could imagine. Emotional manipulation, exploiting peoples insecurities, their need to feel a certain level of status from their peers: these are staple tactics of a marketer, and social media influen…

Two things: 1. You're putting a lot of very different things in the same bag. Marketing is not advertising, and all advertising is not unethical. 2. I don't know where you work, but I'm willing to bet you're making a living because advertisers are pushing a product or service you build/direct. If you're going to make this kind of blanket statement, you should at least follow its implications all the way to the endpoi…

That depends if the ad is just presenting something or the marketeer engages in further "perception management" (I don't know the jargon).

This stuff, buying clicks, lobbying platforms to ban content you don't want to be associated with your product/service because it could distort its "cleanness".

Advertising is needed but there are a lot of valid reasons people don't like them very much.