
An epidemic of fake influencers and the death of meritocracy - zzaner
http://behindthequest.com/instagram-frauds-fake-influencers/
======
kstenerud
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 lot of money because there's not much
competition in this niche.

Next comes the crossover, where the exploit knowledge becomes public, and
everyone now must do it because everyone else is.

Next comes the shutout, where the company running things starts actively
punishing bad actors, but by this time, being a bad actor is essential to
survival, so people do it anyway. It becomes a game of cat-and-mouse, new
exploits, new mitigations.

Eventually, the company manages to fix their algorithms enough that the
exploits don't offer decent marginal returns anymore, and it returns to what
the company originally intended: 1% of people are successful, 99% of people
make next to nothing, and the company makes shitloads.

And then the new big thing comes out. The old system goes into decline and the
new system starts to take over. Rinse and repeat.

~~~
mekoka
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.

~~~
pmlnr
> normal society

Maybe society needs to change.

------
CptFribble
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 rational, logical beings; rather we are
emotional decision makers who largely don't understand our own opinions and
preferences, where they come from, or how much "influence" comes from sources
outside ourselves.

The next time you decide on a particular brand of product, or vote for a
particular politician, ask yourself: _why_ do I think this? Why do I have
_these_ beliefs about how the world works, about how society should be
organized, or about why people should act _this_ way?

At this point it's almost a truism to say ads work. How is the "influencer
game" different from ads? A trusted source shows a product or service, and
some percentage of the followers buy it.

A platform has hundreds of millions of users. Some do anything necessary to
capture as big a slice of that audience, and monetize it.

This may be a revelation for Joe Average who knows nothing of the ad-driven-
startup world, but it shouldn't be a surprise to us.

~~~
Jedi72
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 influencers are the most horrid
incantation of this dystopian reality.

Note that I distinguish marketing from mere ads, which (one hopes) are just
trying to impart information. I have no problem with you saying you have
skateboard for sale at $50. When you pay a 19yr old model to stand there
looking cool with a sultry look on her face, thats not advertising, its
manipulation. Sure it works, its even legal, but it's a very evil thing.

[https://youtu.be/_86qb7hlbJI](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).

~~~
thatfrenchguy
Free will is highly overstated though: as the parent comment said, everything
you think and believe and thus do is linked to a particular social context.
That's true for the stuff you buy, the stuff you believe in, the things you
think are "wrong" or "right" or "normal" or "abnormal". When you start
looking/living in other societies you realise that all of these is just
cultural norms.

~~~
atoav
But it makes a difference whether you are part of creating a society within
which a entities fortune is based on exploiting (and feeding into) the
believes of gullible victims or whether you try to create a society in which
you try to bring out the best from within the people.

The latter is some sort of humanism, that ultimately resulted in all the
things we collectively seem to value about western societies, while the former
is more or less responsible for the biggest problems we have.

So even if free will turns out a complete illusion, it would still matter how
people treat each other based on that idea. Usually you can amend it to: “Free
will is an illusion, at least for those poor idiots who have nobody but
themselves to blame for it, which is why it is socially acceptable for me to
exploit them”

(This is not aimed at you, it is just a thought that crossed my mind, when I
read your comment)

~~~
JabavuAdams
When you have an exploitable information asymmetry, do you exploit others with
it, or do you inoculate others to it?

* or do you exploit others with it until you're financially comfortable and morally uncomfortable, at which point you pivot, mea culpa, and educate...

------
zwaps
Man, reading this makes me so happy I don't care about social media, and I
have other aspirations than trying to be a social media influencer.

What a miserable feeling, chasing numbers, producing and contributing nothing
real to humanity.

I bet it is better for happiness and mental health to stay away from all that.

~~~
BethGagaShaggy
>What a miserable feeling, chasing numbers, producing and contributing nothing
real to humanity.

Yeah. This isn't exclusive to social media influencers, though.

~~~
blackflame7000
The thing is, the people who do it don't know that's all they are doing. It's
meaningful to them. False hope is a terrible thing.

~~~
kmonsen
Again, nothing special about social media/influencers here.

Are not most modern jobs like this?

~~~
zanny
This is what honestly terrifies me more than anything - being in a dire enough
financial situation to need to do bullshit work and waste my short time on
this Earth for food and shelter. In my experience meaningful jobs are in
_insanely_ high demand - they substantially underpay, require substantially
more qualifications, and are much more scarce than adding another cog to the
cancer of finance, advertising, or business service.

------
marcus_holmes
I'm currently doing the Digital Nomad thing, wandering around the world
building a product.

So many "influencers" out there. Usually not only "growing their audience",
but now running courses on "how to live your dream by becoming an Instagram
Influencer while travelling". The industry appears to be eating itself (this
is also true of the nomad thing, too - so many "coaches" and "mentors" out
there who will teach you how to achieve the "nomad lifestyle").

I'm in the lucky position of being able to code for decent money while
travelling, so I get to watch them hustle their arses off trying to make it
work. I would not want to be in their position. The market is declining, the
competitors are increasing, and the option of going home and getting a
"normal" job again feels like total failure.

I get the rage in TFA's article, but all I feel is pity.

~~~
fphilipe
> "how to live your dream by becoming an Instagram Influencer while
> travelling"

Gosh, imagine how that traveling looks like, documenting every moment of it,
creating all these fake, yet real looking spontaneous stories. I doubt that
one can actually enjoy traveling like that, but maybe that's just me.

I feel sorry for these people.

~~~
cjslep
I was in Zermatt 2 weekends ago walking around the town when I suddenly heard
behind me "Hello and welcome to my channel".

Turn around, see a posse of people around a guy pointing a serious camera at
his face. I immediately felt bad for him, it felt so unnatural and the
realization that this "vacation" was a job for him did not make me envious at
all.

My wife and I instead found a bar inhabited by the local service workers and
had a great time hearing their stories.

~~~
bartread
Similar experience yesterday in Coco Rico in Val D'Isere. There seemed to be
two types of people: those who were there to have a good time, and those who
were there to look good on Instagram or YouTube. (I was in the latter
category, obvs.)

------
m-i-l
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](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19554425)

~~~
kerbalspacepro
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!

------
esotericn
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, rectangular screen held
in the hand.

~~~
pitt1980
So who is paying the scam Instagram influencers?

My impression is that who’s interested in this sort of service is something
like small start up fashion brands that can’t afford an actual celebrity.

My brother makes independent video games, at one point he was approached by
someone who offered to broker deal with Twitch streamers to promote one of his
games.

How real the popularity of these streamers really was, effects whether this
might have been a good idea or not.

Whether that evokes your sympathy or not, I guess the moral of the story, of
you’re in the market for purchasing influencer services, buyer beware

~~~
Nasrudith
The streamers seem to be some of the more honest "influencers" acting as
entertainers. At least ones I follow (there are many subgroupings within) will
disclose if they have any special connections or contractual obligations
(can't show this cutscene or boss fight prerelease), sponsorships, or even if
they just received a free copy.

I would advise treating unaffiliated middlemen as scammers like those offering
jobs for money. (If there is some affiliated group of streamers and they
handle communications that is fine.) If you want cheap marketing releasing
some free copies generate no to marginal expenses.

It is respectful to all involved - you are giving away a few potential sales
in exchange for a potential larger market, they can give it a fair shake and
let people know what they think.

The viral effect can be real but it seems to depend on its own merits even if
the "merit" is a gimmick like being hillariously glitchy.

------
president
> This is how it works: someone working at facebook is taking bribes in
> exchange for the blue mark, a middle man will take your money (anywhere
> between $1000 and $15000 dollars, depending on your stupidity) and the
> friend at fb will submit an application for you to be verified. Hopefully it
> will be approved.

This is interesting if true

~~~
blang
Those seem like really low figures for bribes considering the average salary
of a facebook employee.

~~~
maxxxxx
It's pretty common for bribes to be pretty cheap compared to the gain. Same in
DC. The ROI for lobbying is enormous. Spend a few million to get billions in
subsidies or tax cuts.

~~~
shadowprofile76
Exactly and the simple reason why, which keeps these basic economics of
bribery working so robustly, is the asymmetric measures of value/cost inherent
to the two sides of the equation. A government or facebook employee or
whomever who has access to some lever worth a great deal will sell access to
it for these fairly small sums exactly because the much greater value isn't
actually a cost to them. They're leveraging their access to someone elses
resources for personal acquisition of a much smaller but to them worthwhile
gain. You'd never convince a billionaire to sell you access to something of
theirs worth billions by paying them only millions, but, like you said, you
can easily convince a senator to give you access to billions in government
resources (tax money) for a few million to their personal campaign.

------
jrochkind1
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 have _earned_ the
right to get rich scamming the rubes.

~~~
cortesoft
Well, this was written by one of those 'influencers' who is upset that she is
having to compete with 'fake' influencers for ad dollars.

~~~
xkcd-sucks
And who is making money by doing a "submarine" PR piece on "influencer
services"

------
aj7
As a nine-year old, I watched commercials on our black and white TV showing
famous baseball players claiming they "smoked Camels." I knew then that
smoking was dangerous, and that it was unlikely that the players "smoked
Camels," either. So I don't get this influencer crap. I mean I really do not
get it.

~~~
joe_hoyle
I don't think the intentional is to get people to smoke who otherwise
wouldn't. It's to get the people who are going to buy cigarettes, and in doing
so, chose their brand. When confronted with many choices of competing
products, having someone you trust and admire favour a particular product may
be enough to tip the scales and get you to take that option.

I find myself doing this often, due to all the podcast ads I hear! If I'm
going to buy a mattress or printed framed picture I'm going to start with I've
heard about from some "influencer" I follow.

~~~
wasdfff
But why follow the influencer at all?

~~~
joe_hoyle
I guess because we "follow" people who interest us or are like minded. I don't
set out to "follow an influencer", but when I subscribe to a podcast, or
follow someone on twitter because I find their comedy hilarious; that's what
I'm doing.

------
EliRivers
Sounds like it can take a lot of money and effort to become a winner at the
game of Instagram. The system has rules; you have to know them and play them
in order to win. Other players know the rules too, and you know that they know
that, so fun second order effects exist. I can see why it could be fun,
competing with other players. Trying to keep up with whatever kind of picture
(and legend behind it, I expect) scores highly, but presumably knowing that
the only way to break ahead of the pack would be to take a risk on something a
little bit different and win with it. Gambles and game theory and so on.

Instagram isn't something that "matters", though. Is it? Does it matter how
this game is played and how the winners are picked? Surely the only ethical
issue is people playing who don't realise what the rules are; people who think
they're playing a different game based on this "organic" growth the article
discusses, so is the answer just to make sure that everyone who plays knows
that's not the game anymore? The game has changed; we might as well get angry
that Starcraft bouts today bear little resemblance to the slow fumblings that
were seen during the first weekend on Battle.Net after Starcraft's release in
1998.

Do the players need to pretend that the game is still the organic game? Maybe
that's part of it; there's an audience of judges who aren't playing but give
points for "authenticity", I expect. But ultimately, this is a meaningless
game some people like to play; the only harm (apart from people getting so
into playing the game that they take it too seriously and damage their lives,
but that's true of every game) I can see comes when people think they're
playing a different game, but we just need to make the game clear up front.

I am way out of touch. The last online game I played with any dedication was
probably Counterstrike, back when it was an 8MB alpha mod for HL (I think I've
still got that executable on a CD somewhere, if it hasn't flaked with time). I
never did Myspace or Facebook or any of the others, but Instagram just seems
like a sharper distillation of the games that they became.

~~~
CptFribble
It does matter, because "winning" at IG means you have an audience. Audiences
can and will be monetized. I don't think this is that hard to see.

The reason so many people go so hard on the Instagram game isn't just to make
themselves feel good or validated, it's because when you have 400,000 people
watching your stories every day a lot of people will pay you to wear their
gear while you do it.

~~~
EliRivers
Oh sure, ok, money. I didn't really think of that; it's all well out of my
context. It's like sports. It matters like sports matter; for most people just
a bit of fun, and for people really good at it, some money. It matters on an
individual level for people who like it or make a living at it.

------
PaulHoule
It's a older problem than Instagram.

One reason why people don't trust experts is that they see fake experts like
Cokie Roberts and Jim Cramer on TV all day.

~~~
terryschiavo22
How about Dr. Oz instead of Jim Cramer?

~~~
dralley
Sadly, Dr. Oz is a "real expert" chasing dollar signs

------
ilovecaching
I think you could look at the value of an influencer as providing an
aesthetic, much like an artist, but the kicker is that the influencer is
driving ads and is part of a consumerist architecture. While true art is
nourishing, influencing is about depriving someone of contentment by making
them want something they don't have.

I also think when we see people who are paid a lot, we want to like them, and
feel as though they are contributing proportional to their pay. We want to
know that they're working hard, and making a difference on society, not just
for themselves, in a positive way.

The influencer culture is weird, and I would feel weird making so much money
essentially being an ad-person.

~~~
gcb0
would be very entertaining to see you being offered that option.

~~~
ilovecaching
I'm sure there's a point where ego takes over and you start to believe in your
own godhood and essential utility to humanity. :)

------
jondubois
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.

The only hype that my project got was that it appeared on the front page of HN
a couple. of times at the beginning (this was a few years ago).

Because my project grew organically (and mosly linearly) without much social
hype, most users tend to be small independent developers who use it for side
projects. Also it's now being used by 2 of the top 100 cryptocurrencies (by
market cap). Cryptocurrencies tend to generate their own network effects.

~~~
baroffoos
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.

~~~
jondubois
Same happened to my project. I posted it on Reddit, someone saw it and posted
it on HN then it made it to the front page. It got almost 1k stars in the
first 3 days. That was very unusual. It was pure luck. Just like with your
project. You think it's normal because it happened to you but it's not. For
the vast majority of popular open source project, they got popular because of
social connections.

------
kodz4
Why do we call them influencers? Why not rat catchers or pied pipers or
something. Because it feels like this story is going to end, the same way the
one in Hamelin did.

~~~
zwieback
I agree with your point but the pied piper actually initially solved the
problem, was cheated and then came back to take revenge by abducting/drowning
the children. So the parallel doesn't really hold.

~~~
ikeyany
Like that youtube influencer who felt cheated and took revenge by shooting up
their campus?

------
olivermarks
All these products have a beginning, a middle and an end. As more and more
people clamber on board the whole thing becomes top heavy and collapses under
its own weight. Hard to imagine how invasive and fake future mass platforms
will be like though... The house always wins despite running a 'free' platform
for people to load their content into...

------
jeena
What I kind of like about it is that those fake influencers burn money of
advertisers without producing results by forcing ads on real people. At least
in the short run this means less ads for the people which is a really good
thing so I support it.

------
Xelbair
I mean... weren't influencers always fake? It is in their name - they exists
to influence people towards some specific outcome. For some - it is equivalent
to ads, for others it is political agenda.

Some might even believe in what the say and do, but first and foremost they
are platform to deliver an idea. There is nothing real required from them,
just an illusion of it.

------
snickerbockers
>I’m no Mother Teresa, I did my fair share of light-cheating at the beginning
of this dark age

Ok then.

~~~
Noumenon72
I was just skimming, but did anyone else get the impression this guy was
actually trying to teach people how to cheat, with the complaining tone just
for deniability?

~~~
xkcd-sucks
"submarine PR"

------
Theodores
The social media platforms benefit out of this situation.

What surprises me is how similar the recommendations are when I borrow someone
else's computer in a different geographical location to do some testing or
want to use YouTube to look up how to do something. In these scenarios I am on
a different operating system, differently gendered to normal, possibly in a
borrowed account or in incognito mode. Yet I get the same lowest common
denominator stuff that I get at home, logged in and with a particular history.
I come away wondering how tailored those recommendations actually are.

Of course they are not that tailored at all. Unless I specifically look for
something whatever get recommended is going to be from a quite narrow
selection. If I start out looking for a particular topic then the recommended
stuff will steer me back to the same froth that everyone else gets.

If I was a paranoid person I would assume that the social media giants were
especially good at tracking me. But no, I have been tricked into believing
recommendations are more tailored than they actually are.

So why does this suit the social media companies? Well Google/Youtube is
probably the case in point. Shifting those videos around costs bandwidth. They
have had boxes in the telcos before now, they might as well be a virtual
update to Blockbusters and only have the general small selection and not every
single option, that will do for most people most of the time. Or like
libraries in the olden days where you could put in a special order for any
book to borrow but the local library just had a few hundred kiddies books, a
few hundred books in big print for the old folks and a few reference works.

There was a story on here today about how Google search results are skimping
on showing us everything. I actually had not been able to find a former co-
worker recently, and, thanks to the article comments I went on DDG and was
able to find him.

So we have a subset of information going on, the same influencers, the same
search results, the same videos, this also becomes a corpus of information we
rely on and, the more we rely on it, anything outside of the expected becomes
alien and rejected by us. It is like eating the same food every day, variety
that was once the spice of life doesn't sit well.

Special knowledge is always special knowledge though. The really good stuff
has few if any likes/views/reads. It is there for people who take the path
required to get there. It matters not what the medium is.

------
i_am_proteus
What's interesting is that Facebook could easily clamp down on this: they
certainly have the tools to monitor their network for "fake" accounts and
identify activity by pools.

Why wouldn't they? Are they counting this manufactured engagement in the
figures they use to sell advertisements?

~~~
erobbins
Because it's a scam all the way up. FB profits handsomely off these fake
numbers.

------
Havoc
Scams, conmen and pretenders. None of this is new and certainly doesn't mean
the death of meritocracy.

At most this is a conversation about how IG is enabling bad behaviour, but
it's not quite end of the world territory.

~~~
olefoo
The meritocracy was always a sham. The "natural aristocracy of talent" is just
an attempt to gaslight those cut out of the opportunities so that they will
acquiesce to their exploitation.

~~~
Nasrudith
It depends on how one defines merit and natrual. Meritocracy technically only
needs ability to determine - with no regard to fairness, potential, or
optimality in how the ability is obtained.

It is immaterial if the interutero cannibal shark that wins because it
developed first and the consummed would have been stronger it is still the
sole survivor.

Actual aristocrats were better at fighting as they could afford the diet,
equipment, and to train from birth essentially. They had advantages but
martial abilities still ultimately provided the limit. No money or royal blood
could save chevaliers from changes like establishment of pike formations, or
armor piercing crossbows on the battlefield, let alone guns no matter how much
they cried foul about honor.

Ultimately they were part of a high value specialist-low value generalist
cycle like how professional weavers did better than just any peasant in a
cottage but worse than factories designed by more educated engineers but
staffed with unskilled factory workers who in turn may be displaced by
increased automation or cheaper labor elsewhere.

So their surviving descendants "administratized" and had others do the
fighting more while they ruled through other means.

------
Zigurd
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.

But the first step in all these cases is to admit that _influence works._ Stop
putting the onus on the consumer, least of all when the whole "market" leading
up to the consumer is also compromised by influence. Stop claiming that
influence is "free speech." It isn't. It's the corruption of free speech. Stop
claiming that laws against influence are unenforceable. If influence could not
be identified, it could not be remunerated.

While it's often a good idea to imagine a world with fewer laws and rules, or
systems that are self-correcting, the other approach needs consideration, too.
Influence could be regulated, taxed, and circumscribed more tightly, with more
kinds of influence prohibited by law.

Bad influencing won't go away if you ignore it. That's just poisonous
smugness. Influence isn't "just how things are." There's lots of influence
that is already illegal. Choose to do something, or, unless you are a hermit,
things will get worse.

~~~
Nasrudith
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.

~~~
Zigurd
It's hard to catch money laundering. It is very likely that a lot of money
laundering goes on undeterred by law. But still it's illegal. The way it is
detected is by demanding that the banks themselves alert authorities to
possible money laundering.

Similarly because social media platforms have the analytics to detect
advertising masquerading as influencers, this type of unregulated advertising
could be brought under regulation by requiring social media platforms to
report it.

------
JohnFen
Death of meritocracy? I think something has to exist before it can die.

------
droptablemain
Christ, I hate social media.

~~~
tqi
How do you feel about HN?

~~~
meruru
Better culturally than most, but too much of a timesink to be a net-positive
for society.

~~~
HNLurker2
Can't tell if sunk cost fallacy or honest. Do you use IG/other social media?

~~~
meruru
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.

~~~
HNLurker2
So Instagram is inherently worthless?

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

------
jancsika
Maybe I'm super dumb but how much value could an online avatar possibly have
if the mere prevalence of spam causes one's "followers" to lose their focus
and meander away?

------
piokoch
This Instagram influencers thing is really a separate universe of cheats and
tricks. Take those wannabe influencers, who are "promoting" some exclusive
brand for free without brand owner knowledge only to make an impression that
this brand paid them, which means that they are such influential influencers.
Apparently they hope that some other brand owner will look and say "Wow, this
guy was hired by, say, Nike, for a promo, we had to hire her or him as well
too". Crazy times.

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rchaud
Good article. I like that it's been written in the frantic style of someone
who's just discovered the dark patterns inherent in the Internet sharecropping
industry. Hopefully some of the aspiring Youtuber/IG people read this and
understand that the market for influencers is way past the saturation point.

They own the beach, and you are a single grain of sand screaming for attention
among all the other grains of sand.

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fwip
When was meritocracy alive?

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ggggtez
The shear number of typos and punctuation issues should cause anyone to
question why they are taking advice from this person, exactly.

~~~
busyant
> The shear number of typos

Your being facetious, right?

~~~
bilbo0s
> _Your being facetious, right? ..._

Uh, did you _intend_ to misspell that, just to drive home the point? Or did
you actually make a grammatical mistake, while calling out another poster's
grammatical mistake, who was him- or her- self calling out yet a third
person's grammatical mistakes?

~~~
nitrogen
Both Muphry's Law and Poe's Law seem to apply here:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law)

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphry%27s_law](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphry%27s_law)

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Sheilaaliens
This thread is flipping fascinating, so glad I found this site today. I'll be
sitting here with my popcorn.

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DonHopkins
The Commoditization of Scobalization.

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zwieback
But does it matter, really? Instagram is for entertainment, if people are
enjoying it does it matter if it's bots or actual people?

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wjsetzer
The site is currently dead for me. Some sort of SQL issue.

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devoply
Marketing and payola was the norm and is still the norm. Don't have a clue
what this dude is talking about.

~~~
dredmorbius
Dude looks like a lady:

[http://behindthequest.com/about/](http://behindthequest.com/about/)

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Not_a_pizza
I love how articles like this make all these problems seem brand new. As if
scammers never existed before the internet. The internet must be so evil.

~~~
JustSomeNobody
They did exist before the internet. But could they reach the masses for so
little out of pocket? Could they reach as many so easily?

Edit: To a degree, yes. Infomercials were wildly successful. But were there
other ways?

~~~
sverige
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.

~~~
cc439
But I swear these X-ray specs are legit and that you can learn to be a
ventriloquist in only 5 days!

~~~
rchaud
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.

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ratling
This guy keeps going on about how 'you should get everything through hard work
and effort.'

Bullshit, cheat. Cheat blatantly. If there's a broken obvious but unintended
way to accomplish your goal do it.

Otherwise one of the other billions of meatsacks roaming around the planet
will do it first. Then they'll be eating your lunch.

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peteretep
Can't imagine this is going to be my most popular comment but... the first
thing I did was Google for one of the services she's complaining about and
give them $35 for one of the things she's complaining about. If it works, I'll
pump more money into it.

I've spent about $1,200 so far building an Instagram following -- albeit it's
quite small. I'm shooting for 5,000 real, engaged followers, and willing to
spend $5,000 getting it. I think it will be an asset that will easily throw
off more than $5,000 of value for me. We'll see!

~~~
Zenbit_UX
What do you do in life that makes you feel this is a worthy investment?

~~~
peteretep
I’m not sure I understand the question? I think I’ll make more than I spend on
this project

