Click farms: a shadowy internet industry is booming in China

Re:Click farms: a shadowy internet industry is booming in China by nitwit005 on Monday July 22, 2019 @12:55AM (#20495416)

If you can afford buying a thousand used iPhones to start such a business, you aren't exactly living in poverty. Spam operations back in the day probably cost even more given what hardware and bandwidth used to cost.

Even if they weren't trying to BS you, people committing crimes often come up with some sort of story to justify the whole thing. People like to be the hero of their story.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Click farms: a shadowy internet industry is booming in China by onion2k on Monday July 22, 2019 @01:55AM (#20495626)

If you can afford buying a thousand used iPhones to start such a business, you aren't exactly living in poverty.

Or you start small and grow.

Or you borrow money to start.

Or you find an angel investor who is rich.

Etc.

Kind of like any other start up really.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Click farms: a shadowy internet industry is booming in China by nitwit005 on Monday July 22, 2019 @03:00AM (#20495852)

There's a minimum scale below which no one would bother to hire you. No one is going to hire someone with 4 phones set up.

If you can get business loans and financing, that's just another version of not exactlty being poor.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Click farms: a shadowy internet industry is booming in China by Hitton on Monday July 22, 2019 @09:07AM (#20497616)

There is no minimum scale, because those who start are working for companies which organize it. Try searching on youtube: beermoney phone farm

They run 3rd party apps on their phones which automate whole process and they get some percent of profit. I imagine that when they grow they can start working for themselves.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Click farms: a shadowy internet industry is booming in China by pharke on Monday July 22, 2019 @06:02AM (#20496605)

There are grey and black market equivalents of those that someone on this end of the scale is more likely to use. No one's walking into a bank to ask for a loan to start a click farm.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Click farms: a shadowy internet industry is booming in China by puranjay on Monday July 22, 2019 @02:08AM (#20495677)

I'm a marketer and spam is a massive problem in the internet marketing space.

The people who are good at spam - the folks topping Google search results for lucrative phrases or spamming social media on an industrial scale - all tend to have a lot of money.

A business built on spam (or illegal tactics) is, by nature, unstable. You're one bust away from losing all your income.

So the people who enter this space either tend to have so much money that they don't mind losing an income source. Or they have so little money that they spam in desperation

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Click farms: a shadowy internet industry is booming in China by matz1 on Monday July 22, 2019 @04:59AM (#20496326)

So realize that its indeed unstable, you then extract the money as much as you can while you still can. When it goes bust, you move on and do something else.

[ Parent | on HN ]