Karen Read and the Business of Outrage at the True Crime Times.
Like the author, I was not surprised that the mere mention of her name increased clicks, but I was surprised at the extent of it. I do believe in rationality and choice. But sometimes we are just pigeons hitting the bar for another pellet of food.
He’s building his brand, finding it difficult to get traction, and every post has a couple hundred views and maybe a handful of likes. Then he tweets something innocuous about Karen Read, and suddenly the views are in the thousands. He does it again, this time with something more provocative. And the views grow. And he begins to learn that the quality of the reactions—good or bad, pro or con, supportive or troll—doesn’t matter. A view is a view. A hate retweet gooses the stats just as much, and sometimes more, than a supportive one. In the ancient days of social media—circa the year of our Lord 2008—the “ratio” was a thing to be dreaded. Now, it’s all engagement, whether good or bad.
Thank you to bsking for the link
1 comment:
I read the Blake Lively lawsuit and it included and even more nefarious version of this. If someone is trying to destroy a rival celebrity, they can pay for a bit army that will go find people who already don’t like you and boost their content. This encourages the person to keep digging for reasons to hate you, and then gradually others realize anti whoever videos are huge right now. We worry about bots but boosting small accounts with ideas you like means your smear campaign people don’t even know they’re doing a smear campaign, they just think they’ve finally found a tribe of like minded individuals.
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