Meta making fake AI bot users is tedious, death drive-coded AI desperation
That aside, the Q I want answered is how fake 'users' will be (dis)counted when calculating ad clicks, auction prices? You know, the already sketchy pseudoscience on which the surveillance biz model house o' cards rests...
@Mer__edith I'd like to know how effective the incessant advertising bombardment still is.
@Mer__edith It's like Dead Internet Theory has come alive ...
@Mer__edith They need to pay the AI bots, so they can get purchasing power!
@Mer__edith so many supposedly awesome use-cases for AI, yet they have to drown their own platform to tell everyone how much demand for AI there is...
@Mer__edith I'm going to launch a petition in the UK to get #surveillanceadvertising banned.
@Mer__edith Literally stage III of enshittification as per @pluralistic definition: the service is no longer good for end users, nor for advertisers either, but *tries* to be attractive for investors: "hey, now with more AI!".
@Mer__edith I'm sure the online ad community is just fine. Google owns their ad engine and the analytics engine telling you how well those ads are doing. Same with Facebook. I'm sure nothing underhanded has been going on the entire time...
@Mer__edith I assume they will try to figure this out after that man got busted making AI music and then a bunch of AI bots that would stream it over and over so he could make a lot of money.
@Mer__edith have you heard of the Honey browser extension? It’s supposed to search the Internet for coupons for whatever you are shopping for and then I guess it pops up in the corner of your window telling you it found some coupon codes.
There’s big drama because influencers were pushing it and then they found out that if someone is purchasing something with their affiliate code if honey pops up in the corner saying there are coupons, even if there are no coupons, if that person clicks the honey pop up honey gets the affiliate $.
Influencers got scammed and I don’t feel bad for them. But it’s interesting insight into how the cookies work to determine who gets paid for the clicks.
@Mer__edith @signalapp just made my yearly donation to #signal #2025
There is no discount. That is the point. Fake eyeballs == more profit.
Companies that advertise there are just wasting money.
I got the "desperation" vibe as well when I first read that. What I always find so baffling is that they do absurd things like build the social media equivalent of a cyber truck instead of pumping money back in to their product to improve it in ways that increase actual engagement (and ad value) because people enjoy it. Idk I guess I'll never be a billionaire.
Facebook never had a billion users. that could not be independently audited ―by independent, i mean by companies with no money tied to the investment companies propping FB/Meta.
FB & Twitter exist manufacture to users, aka consent.
when the SEC was ready to audit Twitter for exactly that ―manufacturing users that Dorsey & Musk used to hype Tesla & Bitcoin valuations― they got the Saudis to back them into delisting it from NASDAQ.
there is no invisible hand with the FAANGX.
@Mer__edith @_dm the same science that made them their monopolies in the 2000s,
its farce time
Yes sir, its all a scam, always has been, sorry, but u can handle that
we are the goose
@Mer__edith The dead internet theory proves itself correct yet again as Zuckerberg continues his desperate march towards keeping his platforms alive.
@Mer__edith fraud is already 70% of online advertising budgets. 99% of budgets go wasted. It will go unnoticed because it's already happening.
@Mer__edith genuinely believe there's gonna be automated purchases happening within incestuous company trade agreements, making it so that to participate in selling one has to buy back an increasing % of one's own product to even make it on the search results to make online sales.
@Mer__edith Do they count the bots as active users and in other user metrics, inflating their numbers to make stockholders think everything is going great?
@Mer__edith@mastodon.world
The real question is why does the biggest #social #media #network in the world need fake users.
@Mer__edith My immediate first thought was to wonder how long after the site is abandoned by most bio humans before the advertisers realize what they are paying for.