A Politically Incorrect Over-view On How Fake Views Work (or NOT) #BlackHatSundays

Marketing any business involves deployment of multi-variant approaches to hold space in the imagination of the targeted consumer. One of the unethical practices we find today is the inflation of views by music artists for the purposes of giving an illusion of social proof.

Rihanna, Justin Beiber, Tekashii , Post Malone and even Jay Z have done it. Roki was recently  called out for it this week. 

In this article I will answer the important questions as briefly as possible.

Why do people buy fake views and subscribers?

It is common sense that social proof contributes to brand recognition and increases the chances of engagement. Human beings have been long known to have a herd mentality. If a person enters an auditorium where benches are split by an isle and everyone is on one side and not the other, they are not likely to go and sit alone on the empty side.

They trust that everyone else is probably sitting on one side for a good reason.

So artists and record labels (including major labels) sometimes inflate the engagement of their artists to create an illusion of hype which is then picked up on by the naïve and  unsuspecting public, which tends to only support things after they have numbers.

People don't buy art they buy the artist

If you ask anyone in the visual arts community they will tell you that what sells an art-piece is less to do with how well done it is but rather the story or the brand behind it. This holds true for NFT's as well.

It sort of coincides with Marshall McLuhan's assertion that "The medium is the message".

Record labels know this hence they buy fake views and play money for artist videos, to create a large brand in the collective consciousness which hopefully leads to justification of the price they make that brand.

The money is fake too.

This doesn't have to continue after the brand gets respect on auto-pilot. This is why there is always a detachment between real talent and people that are over-hyped.

Tricking The Algorithms

Youtube search sometimes ranks topics in terms of view count and also is likely to suggest on the same basis.  The other idea that these people are implementing is to trick the algorithm to increase their visibility to real people (who will think, oh let me click this because it has 10,000 views already).

But doesn't YouTube Crack down on Bots

Well just as Google updates its algorithms so do bad actors. They change their mechanisms.

In countries where there is a lot of internet but low income opportunities, people join click farms and stream farms where they get paid a small amount per video they view. The cost per view usually comes down to $0.01 per view. They probably watch for 30 seconds and so forth.

This becomes hard for Youtube to classify them as bots because, this is done by real accounts although some of them can be blacklisted and flagged for abnormal behaviour.

On another end there are rooms full of phones that automatically stream entire videos all day especially in China and Russia. Mind you these phones can mask their IP's as coming from various countries using VPN software.

That's how the industry is gaming the system. Many Spotify users have even complained that sometimes they find their Spotify streaming on its own. This is because these black hats can actually hack into people accounts and stream.

The Risks

The risk of getting caught is getting de-platformed and of course this depends on where and how one is getting these streams. Major Labels are obviously in touch with Google insiders who know how to game the system.

The mechanisms are fraudulent because if they bypass Youtube, it means it may give undeserved payouts for streams that were not from actual humans.

Don't Expect any Record Label To Admit

All brands and artists will always accredit hard work and talent to their success, so it's absolutely useless to think that any artist will admit though many artists have been caught for buying views including Rihanna and Justin Beiber.

It's tough out there! Numbers do lie.

Should I buy YouTube Views

Well it really boils down to what your marketing strategy is or your moral code. I am just heare to give you the ins and outs.