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An epidemic of fake influencers and the death of meritocracy

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

#191

Post by rchaud »

cc439 wrote: post #62
sverige wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in ancient times, scammers placed small ads in the back of comic books and computer ad catalogs and gardening magazines and the like. I remember one case where a guy placed an ad that said, "Send $1 to [his P.O. box]" and made some money over the course of a few months before anyone complained. He didn't promise to send anything for the dollar, so iirc he wasn't prosecuted.

But I swear these X-ray specs are legit and that you can learn to be a ventriloquist in only 5 days!

I loved seeing those ads in vintage Archie comics ('60s-'80s editions). Those ads wouldn't bother including a photo, but usually had a nicely drawn artist's rendering. That to me spelled a certain kind of commitment to the scam. Today, all they'd have to do is select the right demographic on FB ads (usually people who "also express interest in" IQ pills or some other snake oil), and click a button to put the text-only ad live.

Maybe add a bad Photoshop image if you're feeling creative.

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

#192

Post by Jedi72 »

growlist wrote: post #173
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…

> You're attempting to take away people's free will, using the dirtiest tactics one could imagine I flipped open at random the other day the book 'Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion' and was a bit disturbed by what I read. It was about a particular way of starting a conversation in order to manipulate someone into then finding it difficult to resist your next conversational gambit, with the obvious end goal of p…

Your last sentence is perfect. Get rich and get out. Probably the front and center thought of every tech worker.

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

#193

Post by smolder »

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…

Advertising is unethical in my opinion when it lies or misleads, or it fosters fears and impulses that negatively impact individuals quality of life, or their social contribution and therefore others' QoL. One example is advertising toys to kids during kids programming: most of this is done in a way that makes kids feel left out for not having the toys, relies on FOMO, envy, and molds susceptible children into more jealous and materialistic people. It misleads them with its imagery into thinking they will be extremely happy if they just have that thing. I think that perhaps even the majority of what is done as accepted practice in advertising (across all its forms) is harmful, and further, it will stay that way because the $ales a campaign generates are the only measure of success as far as success is rewarded.

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

#194

Post by Nasrudith »

Zigurd wrote: post #172

Influence works. If it didn't, nobody would practice it. Some forms of influence are clearly illegal. But there are vast gray areas, like pharma sales, where doctors are offered speaking fees to "speak" to an empty room near a nice beach. I would throw both the doctor and the pill pusher into a dark hole and throw away the key and that would save our society tens, maybe hundreds of billions of dollars and many lives.…

The funny thing is advertising is an area where it is hard to determine /why/ something was successful. Is it the ad campaign or because the new flavor is that good?

If you could give perfect attribution of influence on outcomes you should probably be a world changing billionaire already.

Anything which affects speech affects free speech "corruption" had nothing to do with it. The goal of speech is to spread a message which is a form of influence!

Defamation laws can still affect free speech and can and have been abused to stifle truth and criticism. It is dangerously naive to think that one can just restrict "influencing" and not cause harm. Point out the mayor id taking bribes? Jail for trying to influence elections and operation of the state.

Even most radically you could stop renumiation sure but that doesn't mean influence would be stopped and would only give rise to networks of "not paid for influencing" influencers.

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

#195

Post by badosu »

mekoka wrote: post #158
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…

You're describing society. Any free "social" system, virtual or otherwise, can and will attract the same ingredients and the outcome will be a strong approximation of a normal society.

Further reference: https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths

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

#196

Post by conanbatt »

luckylion wrote: post #149
conanbatt wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Preventable fraud is still fraud.

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

#197

Post by smolder »

ivanhoe wrote: post #160
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…

Everything that we do in life is a form of marketing and PR. The very way we present ourselves to the world, our body language, how we dress, make up, color and style our hair, stuff that we talk about, it's all an attempt to sell ourselves as better and smarter and sexier than the competition, and we all do it all the time. And for all of us at least part of it is really just plain fake. If you'd apply the same rule…

I make it a point not to sell myself in superficial ways. I'm privileged not to be hideous to look at, and am not completely uninvested in my image, but I don't chase trends or use self help book tips on how to make people like me. It doesn't really help me to be this way, but I am repulsed by the self perpetuating standard rituals of deference, attention seeking, and status signalling that seem to me to preclude what could be a more genuine form of interpersonal discovery.

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

#198

Post by smolder »

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.

It's an illusion to any given organism, from the outsiders meta kind of view, sure, but in the context of your own reality, it's real. Your decision making depends in ways on believing you have decisions to make. Not having a sense of free will can have some negative consequences, whether or not you believe we are actually deciding anything or just a function of our inputs.

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

#199

Post by meruru »

HNLurker2 wrote: post #165
meruru wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. I follow a lot of blogs and feel the same way about most of them as I do about HN. I do not feel that way about truly high-quality blogs. By the way, RSS is the best thing ever. I also use IRC whenever I have some question or need help with something and it's great. I never feel my time spent on IRC is a waste, but my usage of it is quite focused and I don't hang out in rooms compulsively like I do on HN.

So Instagram is inherently worthless?

I don't know, is it? I've never used it because it's a Facebook data mining tool.

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

#200

Post by kerbalspacepro »

m-i-l wrote: post #22

See also "How I Eat for Free in NYC Using Python, Automation, AI, and Instagram"[0] for an indication as to how "easy" it is to write an algorithmic social media "influencer" with 25K followers. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19554425

I thought this was going to be an essential part of this article, but it seems like IEO (Instagram Engine Optimization) is actually technically boring and scammy, whereas automated IEO- while still scammy- is technically interesting!
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