I feel like with rampant bot/AI posting the traffic into social media sites are being spoofed. And companies know this and allow it to happen because it will inflate the ad value and then the stock value. Is this true to an extent or is this taken into account?
Anyone with a brain knew that online ad metrics had been borked by bots for 15 years now. This isn’t new, it’s just the industry is still playing pretend, and as long as you have enough industry leaders playing pretend and not saying the quiet part out loud, nothing will get done.
Also, it’s a dead-end politically, because both parties love being able to sockpuppet online. Correct the Record and Cambridge Analytica are both examples of this kind of behavior from each party. They won’t make legal rules around sockpuppeting because it benefits them. They won’t go out of their way to make sockpuppets have to say they’re a paid advertisement like news and radio ads do. Because they much prefer it that it “seems like people are saying this” because they send in so many bots with their talking points. They’d prefer to flood the zone will bullshit than let citizens come to their own conclusions about anything.
So, don’t expect this problem to get better anytime soon. It’s too beneficial of a tool to the political and business classes. They won’t make any rules to stop it or make advertisers admit how many of their “views/clicks” are bots.
To play devil’s advocate here, why would advertisers not object to this situation if their money is not effectively recruiting as many customers as platforms claim?
This is my take. If this held true, why are advertisers not pulling out or drastically limiting their deals with these companies? They obviously find the value proposition worth it, bots included. So, by that metric, I don’t think they’re overvalued. They’re valued on what they bring in from advertisers and that seems to be working well. I wish it didn’t (hence me being here), but reddit is exceptionally effective at delivering ads. I don’t think reddit is going to fail as hard as we all wish they would.
NFS.
Pitchfoooorks! GETCHA PITCHFORKS HERE FOLKS!
. ⌐----
. -------±--
. ∟----
Don’t buy stocks of social media companies. And save your pitchforks for some more useful application.