We've become quite adept at pointing out the conflicting incentives, scaling problems vis-a-vis mobs, and hidden rights violations users agree to without realizing the implications. There is, however, another aspect to this we don't talk about much.
Who suffers the most here? It obviously not the social media platforms. They adapt their code and move on. It's not the users, at least in the long run. The problem has been identified and resolved. It's not the people selling likes. They get punished, bail out on some fake accounts and get new ones. Even if you could somehow ban individuals from using platforms, there's a million more people willing to create fake likes from where those came from.
It's the poor, as always. The people who know the system is rigged, know the system has to be gamed in order to make money, and are desperately looking for a way to be competitive and get ahead. So they buy some fake likes, then get destroyed by the social media companies. Perhaps they've already invested a lot of time in their presence before they got desperate. In either case, they're not running fake ids. It's just them. And they don't know enough tech to move on. They get slammed for life for making a poor moral choice. Why? Because they're easy to find and it's easy to punish them.
> It's the poor, as always. The people who know the system is rigged, know the system has to be gamed in order to make money, and are desperately looking for a way to be competitive and get ahead.
> They get slammed for life for making a poor moral choice. Why? Because they're easy to find and it's easy to punish them.
This observation has strong parallels with how the poorest are lowest rung of the drug trade - on the street, and bear the highest price of it - death or imprisonment, while the higher level traffickers usually get away with impunity. But the populace feels good because of the disheveled mugshot of the street drug dealer they saw on the evening news.
The drug analogy is very interesting. As you may know, 100-ish years ago, drugs were legal. Some people frowned upon them, some did not. Then there was a great moral uprising followed by legislation, then we had the War on Drugs. Finally the pendulum seems to be swinging the other way. So we've seen most of a full cycle.
Continuing your low-level drug dealer example, if that guy that runs the car wash down the street gets banned for using fake likes, why shouldn't he? It was a bad thing to do! We can see him, we know him, he did a bad thing and deserves his punishment. Not only does he deserve his punishment, we should shame him if we can in order to discourage others from contemplating doing the same thing. Maybe if we increase punishment we can see less of that sort of thing around here.
Ever hear how a lot of social/internet companies got started? Sock puppets, fake likes, generated social proof, paying off influencers, and so forth. All the things the little, common folk aren't supposed to do today. It seems there is a moral code for the common folk and a separate one for our betters. All animals are equal ...
This story, where we find all these millions of fake people and likes, is a "drugs on the table" story: big flash, looks like progress is being made, we have heroes and villains, feats of strength and daring, and people can feel like the net is somehow safer. Then things can go on as usual.
Another recent example of this are the ICE raids on slaughterhouses rounding up undocumented immigrant workers.
I've yet to hear of a single executive of those companies arrested and put on trial for their employment practices. It's almost as if changing the employment practices wasn't the objective.
Who suffers the most here? It obviously not the social media platforms. They adapt their code and move on. It's not the users, at least in the long run. The problem has been identified and resolved. It's not the people selling likes. They get punished, bail out on some fake accounts and get new ones. Even if you could somehow ban individuals from using platforms, there's a million more people willing to create fake likes from where those came from.
It's the poor, as always. The people who know the system is rigged, know the system has to be gamed in order to make money, and are desperately looking for a way to be competitive and get ahead. So they buy some fake likes, then get destroyed by the social media companies. Perhaps they've already invested a lot of time in their presence before they got desperate. In either case, they're not running fake ids. It's just them. And they don't know enough tech to move on. They get slammed for life for making a poor moral choice. Why? Because they're easy to find and it's easy to punish them.
That's whack.