• teyrnon@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      16
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      8 hours ago

      To then sell those accounts to people trying to manipulate the real users on the site.

      • joeljoelle@piefed.blahaj.zone
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        9
        ·
        8 hours ago

        Yeah, I’m sure that was going on a LOT, I never really had it in the forefront of my mind though, mostly because thinking of ways to make money seems to be an alien concept to my mind. I wonder how much mine was worth before I got banned… probably not much anyways it was mostly comment karma from answering questions. Oh well lol.

        • BeUnique@lemmy.zip
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          4
          ·
          5 hours ago

          I checked my first one (that was banned later) once out of curiosity. 8ish years over 100k karma and it was like $20? You’d have to really grind to make any money like having a bot farm or something. Granted I never actually checked my account specifically, just similar accounts with similar age and karma.

          This was years ago that I looked. I wouldn’t be surprised if the number has gone down since then.

          • joeljoelle@piefed.blahaj.zone
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            5 hours ago

            Oh gosh well mine was like $5 then lol. Yeah it really doesn’t seem worth it to me but then I live in a totally different economy I suppose.

            • BeUnique@lemmy.zip
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              40 minutes ago

              Yeah agreed. But if you’re in a 3rd world country or some broke teenager that money goes farther. Bot farms buy “legit” accounts then influencers pay them for likes and interactions on social media platforms fooling The algorithm into thinking the content is popular then putting the bought content into real human’s social media feeds. I have watched YT videos on how the stuff operates in the past. It just goes to prove that the internet is fake af. Going viral can be bought. Algorithms can be manipulated. It’s all bullshit.

              Lemmy seems pretty legit so far though! I’m pretty new here but it seems like a small corner of the internet that’s not yet taken over by 90% bots!

              …yet…

        • teyrnon@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          4
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          8 hours ago

          It probably wouldn’t get that much either, most of those karma farmers are in low income countries with lots of english speakers, eastern europe, india, places like that.

          • joeljoelle@piefed.blahaj.zone
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            8 hours ago

            I suppose, I just heard about the vastness of the old WoW gold farming economy semi recently, the amount of money going through that kind of stuff is just mind boggling.