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While the internet seems very much alive and authentic with never-ending updates to social feeds and ballooning view counts on streaming sites, studies claim that “less than 60 percent of web traffic is human.” Researchers say a good chunk of the internet consists of “bots masquerading as people,” which isn’t a far-fetched idea, considering the increasing indictments against digital advertisers who commit fraud by using bots to forge everything from clicks to accounts. NY Mag’s Intelligencer column postulates that the metrics, people, businesses, content, politics, and we ourselves (judging by the prevalence of CAPTCHA) are "fake."
These days, the Times found, you can buy 5,000 YouTube views — 30 seconds of a video counts as a view — for as low as $15; oftentimes, customers are led to believe that the views they purchase come from real people. More likely, they come from bots. On some platforms, video views and app downloads can be forged in lucrative industrial counterfeiting operations. If you want a picture of what the Inversion looks like, find a video of a “click farm”: hundreds of individual smartphones, arranged in rows on shelves or racks in professional-looking offices, each watching the same video or downloading the same app.
These days, the Times found, you can buy 5,000 YouTube views — 30 seconds of a video counts as a view — for as low as $15; oftentimes, customers are led to believe that the views they purchase come from real people. More likely, they come from bots. On some platforms, video views and app downloads can be forged in lucrative industrial counterfeiting operations. If you want a picture of what the Inversion looks like, find a video of a “click farm”: hundreds of individual smartphones, arranged in rows on shelves or racks in professional-looking offices, each watching the same video or downloading the same app.