What Are Click Farms?
If you do a simple search for click farms you will find several articles about how they are becoming the new “sweat shops.” The article I’m linking to now focuses more on what click farms are, and how they manipulate and guide social media for everyone.
But first, here’s a wiki definition for click farm, and below is an excerpt from that page. Next time you check out your favorite author or celebrity you might want to think twice about their alleged fan base. I don’t think it’s possible to single anyone out because everyone’s doing it, and they’re doing it to survive. In other words, if everyone is doing this and you’re trying to survive in this kind of competitive atmosphere you’d be an idiot not to do it, too.
It was found that “31% will check ratings and reviews, including likes and Twitter followers, before they choose to buy something”. This shows the increasing importance that businesses, celebrities and other organisations put on the number of likes and followers they have. This creates monetary values for likes and followers which means that businesses and celebrities feel compelled to increase their likes to create a positive online profile.
You see it all the time, and you wonder.
This is from The New Republic. It goes into more detail about how social media is so carefully manipulated these days.
Most of the accounts Casipong creates are sold to these digital middlemen—“click farms” as they have come to be known. Just as fast as Silicon Valley conjures something valuable from digital ephemera, click farms seek ways to create counterfeits. Google “buy Facebook likes” and you’ll see how easy it is to purchase black-market influence on the Internet: 1,000 Facebook likes for $29.99; 1,000 Twitter followers for $12; or any other type of fake social media credential, from YouTube views to Pinterest followers to SoundCloud plays. Social media is now the engine of the Internet, but that engine is running on some pretty suspect fuel.
You can read the rest here. I run across this every day, mostly on Twitter. I find it harder to manage Twitter than other social media because there’s so much fakery and anonymity it’s impossible to tell who is real and who isn’t…which leads me to believe most of it’s fake, from the snarky Twitter woman with the laser tits to that Twitter guy who thinks he invented sarcasm.
When NYT Outed Jim Parsons
I remember this vaguely, but not in detail. Jim Parsons of “Big Bang” was outed during an interview with the New York Times. I didn’t realize until now that he was that surprised at the time.
In the interview with The New York Times for the 2012 revival of the The Normal Heart: when asked whether, as a gay man, acting in a story about the HIV crisis was ‘meaningful,’ he was able to respond ‘yes’.
It was the first time the actor had confirmed, officially, he is gay.
‘I can’t tell you what a wonderful thing that was, what a gift he gave me with one question. It was suddenly out there and official,’ he told his interviewer and fellow actor, James Lipton.
I can imagine it was wonderful. I know the feeling well.
Florida Cop and Teenage Lesbian
In this disturbing story, a Florida cop allegedly forced a teenage lesbian into stripping during what was a routine stop for making an illegal u-turn.
The youngster, who does not want to be identified, was taken to a room and she charges the officer told her ‘to take off my pants or I was going to get arrested.’
‘He said let me see your behind. He looks at me up and down and asked me if I was on my menstrual,’ the alleged victim said to CBS4 News.
‘I told him yes. How did you know? And he said he was asking me a simple question.’
Menocal allegedly asked the teenager if she were a virgin and how she had sex with her girlfriend.
The rest is here. No comment.
Big Brother Transgender Contestant
It’s summer again, and Big Brother will begin again. I’ve done posts about BB for years that range from homophobic comments to the worst kind of racism. I’m too lazy to link, but for the record this is the only reality show I ever watch…or watched.
In any event, this summer BB will have a transgender house guest.
It was a a big reveal meant for next Wednesday when the CBS summer reality series Big Brother returns for its 17th season.
But TMZ caught wind that one of this year’s houseguests is a transgender woman named Audrey Middleton and ran with the story.
So the show’s host, Julie Chen, officially shared the news on the daytime show The Talk which she co-hosts.
This should be interesting. BB doesn’t always have the best reputation with these things, and more often than not it could be said they sensationalize and exploit LGBT people for monetary gain and higher ratings. In the same respect, I watch it because I find it’s an excellent exercise in what happens when you put a group of average people together fighting for a grand prize of a half a million dollars. They’ll do anything for a buck. In that respect, it’s a brilliant game of strategy and physical endurance. I’d do it.
