Interesting how monetisation turns a once “open” system into a strange battleground of content farming.
As someone who leans right, I’m usually all for the free market at work, but here it feels like an outright perversion of market logic, where gaming the algorithm wins over genuine creativity. It’s especially wild to read how entire groups coordinate to pump each other’s engagement.
I guess it’s naïve to expect “fairness” in social media, but the fact that Musk’s Twitter encourages this dynamic is eye-opening—and not in a good way.
The Indian farming seems to have been going on for 1-2 years already, and nothing has been done about it. Clearly, X staff must have noticed this in their internal statistics. Maybe they know something we don't know, or maybe they just didn't think of a good solution. Hard to say.
Why would X see this as a problem in need of a solution? The Indian farmers are not bots, so their engagment that gets reported to advertisers is not fraudulent. Perhaps the advertisers have some problem with this, but given that X has done nothing about it, it seems like they don't. The Indian farmers see ads like everybody else.
Imagine if verified, paying users got a "superlike" or "tip" button, and payouts were based on superlikes. So then verified users could make an effort to "superlike" the original creator of the content instead of the person who's posting the screenshot. Perhaps the "superlike" could be somewhat hidden in the interface so it would only be accessed by serious users. To prevent gaming the system, revenue from your "superlikes" would never exceed, say, 80% of the amount you're paying for your X subscription. Would this system help?
Interesting how monetisation turns a once “open” system into a strange battleground of content farming.
As someone who leans right, I’m usually all for the free market at work, but here it feels like an outright perversion of market logic, where gaming the algorithm wins over genuine creativity. It’s especially wild to read how entire groups coordinate to pump each other’s engagement.
I guess it’s naïve to expect “fairness” in social media, but the fact that Musk’s Twitter encourages this dynamic is eye-opening—and not in a good way.
The Indian farming seems to have been going on for 1-2 years already, and nothing has been done about it. Clearly, X staff must have noticed this in their internal statistics. Maybe they know something we don't know, or maybe they just didn't think of a good solution. Hard to say.
Why would X see this as a problem in need of a solution? The Indian farmers are not bots, so their engagment that gets reported to advertisers is not fraudulent. Perhaps the advertisers have some problem with this, but given that X has done nothing about it, it seems like they don't. The Indian farmers see ads like everybody else.
I doubt they have any purchasing power or are the audience the advertisers want to see their message though.
"Interesting how monetisation turns a once “open” system into a strange battleground of content farming."
Yes, rapaciousness has a way of ruining everything. It is a destructive human trait.
Ubersoy's post got fewer views because he has fewer followers and uses niche language in the post.
Yes, so my post beat his because I have more followers (rich get richer, Matthew effect).
Imagine if verified, paying users got a "superlike" or "tip" button, and payouts were based on superlikes. So then verified users could make an effort to "superlike" the original creator of the content instead of the person who's posting the screenshot. Perhaps the "superlike" could be somewhat hidden in the interface so it would only be accessed by serious users. To prevent gaming the system, revenue from your "superlikes" would never exceed, say, 80% of the amount you're paying for your X subscription. Would this system help?