
How spammers are gaming the podcast charts - voodooranger
https://chartable.com/blog/chartbreakers
======
ballenf
A podcaster (and Youtuber) who I really enjoy is CGP Grey. He has been
proposing allowing voluntary _removal_ of view numbers from Youtube and
similar platforms.

I think Apple should fix or remove their rankings but, _please_ , don't add
any more metrics.

The podcast world is currently mostly immune from so much of the clickbaity
trash on Youtube (that arguably isn't even YT's fault).

I admit it's very counterintuitive or almost subversive these days to suggest
that internet points be kept secret.

Edit: Here's a CGP Grey video where he talks indirectly about how he sees the
internet fracturing his (our?) ability to pay attention and focus.
[https://youtu.be/wf2VxeIm1no](https://youtu.be/wf2VxeIm1no)

~~~
a7776f88862
> I admit it's very counterintuitive or almost subversive these days to
> suggest that internet points be kept secret.

Media popularity rankings are toxic for everyone but distribution middlemen
and advertisers. They turn what should be heterogeneous markets for content
producers and their audiences in many different niches (geographic area,
interests, subcultures, etc), into a global winner-take-all popularity race in
a single market (owned by the distribution middlemen, like iTunes, Amazon,
Google Play, etc). The kind of market where every seller is ranked by a single
metric and only the top few are rewarded makes sense for things like
professional sports, but very little else.

~~~
skinnymuch
Which of the two groups of people are benefitting from Hacker News showing
metrics? Stories show points and total number of comments. Anyone can see
anyone’s total karma. And you personally can see your comment karma.

YouTube and and other social media would still get advertising and such
without public metrics since you could give private access to them when trying
to make deals.

So overall I don’t see how either groups of people mentioned are benefitting
much from HN showing metrics.

~~~
a7776f88862
> Which of the two groups of people are benefitting from Hacker News showing
> metrics?

That is a bit of a nonsense question. Neither benefit, because there is no
advertising on HN, and HN is not a media distribution business. HN is an
online forum, and the original point of post ratings on forums was
crowdsourced moderation. The point of online forum moderation is to remove
spam, trolling, kooks, and other things that waste your reading time. So
moderation is a strictly negative system. Using post ratings for online
reputation is what turns it into a positive system.

IMO online reputation based on upvotes is a game with no winners, only losers.
Problems include gamification and addiction, groupthink, privacy risks (it is
very easy to correlate bits of information to deanonymize pseudonyms, the
persistent use of which the point system encourages). What's the benefit? It
is much more valuable to focus on the moderation aspects. The problem with
online communities today is keeping out spam, trolls, kooks, idiots, and other
bad actors. Modding down inane and ignorant postings so that they don't waste
people's time is much more valuable in keeping forums interesting and relevant
than another 10 upvotes. "Harmless" but useless and time-wasting posts will
drive participants away and erode the community. That is the one of the
lessons of Eternal September.

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CPLX
I think this article should be retitled to remove the word "How" at the
beginning, since it doesn't even really speculate how one would go about doing
this. It's interesting nonetheless.

Any ideas? Assume that someone decided to harness one of the many click-farms
to do automated podcast subscriptions?

I suppose it's also possible that Apple did an ill-advised algorithm change or
something that changed the weights very heavily, and the spammers who had been
quietly doing their thing for months suddenly all got promoted.

~~~
smock
We can't say for sure how the charts are being gamed, but there is strong
evidence that its related to a pay per play scheme to pump subscription
numbers in a small time window. The implication of the graph visualization is
that the same iTunes users are subscribing to all of the suspect shows, and
all on one storefront (the U.S.).

~~~
JohnJamesRambo
I'm reminded of the images from China where one person is in front of rows and
rows of phones clicking on stuff and that is their job. Would that do the job
here?

~~~
smock
Apple doesn't publicly comment on how the chart rankings are calculated, which
is why we can't draw strong conclusions, but our understanding is that this
would do the job. Since the somewhat catastrophic failure of the charts a week
ago its clear that Apple did update their algorithms, but its not clear how
(and some of the same players identified in the blog are still ranking
highly).

------
Latteland
It's going to be just like record charts. People are looking for those
popularity lists to find the interesting and good stuff that other people are
listening to. We'll have scandals, companies will be pushing up their own
ratings via nefarious means. Then you get more viewers, more money from
advertisers, your network benefits - there must be podcast celebrities who get
the equivalent of payola to say they like another podcast. History repeats
itself.

------
arprocter
The algorithm seems to be weighted to boost new subscriptions - looking at the
Chartable top US-all there is one at #20 which recently launched (has 6
episodes) which is above This American Life at #28

~~~
smock
While Apple doesn't comment on how the rankings are calculated, the common
knowledge is indeed that its heavily biased towards recent subscriptions.

~~~
tracker1
Maybe it should be more weighted towards regular releases over a longer period
of time... points for releasing on average of once a day, or once a week for
over 2 years after hitting X subscribers. I can't speak for anyone else, but
those are the podcasts that I would be most inclined to want to hear/see.

------
JustSomeNobody
I have never used a podcast top X chart before. I usually think, hmmm, I
wonder if there's a podcast about <some subject> and search the internet for
that.

I guess I care more about a subject than popularity.

------
mcbits
Startup idea for anyone so inclined: Create a podcast distribution service
where podcasters pay the current cost of a postage stamp per listener to push
podcasts onto devices. If the recipient listens to the podcast, the money is
refunded to the podcaster. If they delete it or ignore it for 30 days, they
keep the money. The podcasters are allowed to see anonymized metrics for who
listens to what. Listeners can use their earnings to tip their favorite
podcasters, or just cash out.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
Sweet! I can now sign up to as many podcasts as I want, never listen to
anything, and make money.

And so can everyone else.

And podcasters would love to use this distribution system that will net them
$0 after risking capital, ONLY if they magically achieve a 100% listen rate in
spite of the incredible incentives to have the listen rate be 0%. Otherwise
it’ll cost them money.

And for all that hassle and risk, they get a distribution system no better
than the free and open one they enjoy now.

Perhaps I’ve misunderstood something, otherwise I don’t think this idea is
viable :)

~~~
mcbits
You don't have to sign up for any podcasts. You just sign up and start
receiving recommendations. At first, recommendations are free or virtually
free for the podcaster, since there is no data about your interests. You start
accepting the ones that interest you and rejecting the ones that don't.

Podcasters get access to the entire data set for every listener and can run
clustering and regression to their hearts' content. As you listen to podcasts
and perhaps rate them, the cost to target you (i.e. your random ID) goes up
because the podcasters have better data to work with and should know better
than to send you politics podcasts when all you listen to is vampire erotica.

If you become a listener, then they've acquired a listener and you've acquired
a podcast that you like. If you're not interested, then they pay the cost of
poor targeting, and you are compensated for the inconvenience. _Proper
incentives all around!_

The net cost to the podcaster doesn't have to be $0 for the service to be
worthwhile. It only has to be more effective than AdWords and other venues
where they pay to expose themselves.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
Sorry, this would never work. Maybe if Apple launched this so that you had
already overcome chicken and the egg. But I’d never ever sign up for this as a
podcaster (or any kind of audience builder) unless there was literally no
other choice because that’s where ALL the listeners are. Even then, I’d
probably just do something else rather than allow some sleazy middle-man to
screw me over while trying to connect with my fans.

You’re totally missing the point that podcasts are pull, not push. I listen to
dozens of them, none of them have ever “spammed” me. That literally makes no
sense. I subscribed to them. There’s no way for them to push their podcast on
someone who doesn’t want it.

~~~
mcbits
It's not a chicken-and-egg problem. Clearly, building the audience is the
harder problem and the priority. When you have an audience, podcasters pay to
reach that audience, which is usually done by pestering people with web ads
until they install an ad blocker or by hiring sleazy "PR consultants" to spam
the ratings and reviews and social media. This would just cut out those
middlemen and compensate the audience directly whenever the messaging misses
the mark.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
No users will sign up for a podcast app / network that has no podcasters on
it. And no podcasters are going to pay to reach a non-existent userbase.

~~~
mcbits
You're in such a rush to shoot down the idea that you haven't taken 3 seconds
to realize how trivial it is to create a podcast site/app with thousands of
podcasts but no users. Users are the chicken and the egg, just as they are for
the podcasters who spend more time and money on audience-building than on
podcasting.

------
jakemor
or: How to Game to Podcast Chart

~~~
appleiigs
There is no “how” in the article other than “click farms”. It should be
“Spammers are gaming podcast charts”.

