Click farms: a shadowy internet industry is booming in China

Re:Click farms: a shadowy internet industry is booming in China by lazyjones on Monday July 22, 2019 @10:07AM (#20498066)

> Things like click farming do extract wealth, but they increase systemic waste, meaning less value can be produced. That in turn increases the amount of desperation, making people more likely to join them in doing something exploitative just to survive.

Perhaps these click farms are just an evolving reaction to the PITA that is online advertising. It's the advertising industry that gets harmed by it and not some other poor people and it should eventually lead to more transparency for their customers, who would like to compare their traffic with what the adtech provider logged and isolate the fraudulent clicks.

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Re:Click farms: a shadowy internet industry is booming in China by close04 on Monday July 22, 2019 @10:54AM (#20498529)

People (advertisers) are surprised that the internet is beginning (continuing?) to be reshaped around their business and a whole ecosystem emerged to take advantage of this, no matter how unfairly.

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Re:Click farms: a shadowy internet industry is booming in China by kevin_thibedeau on Monday July 22, 2019 @08:06PM (#20503386)

Advertisers pass their costs onto their customers. Everyone is hurt by fraud.

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Re:Click farms: a shadowy internet industry is booming in China by lazyjones on Tuesday July 23, 2019 @02:15PM (#20508897)

> Everyone is hurt by fraud.

No, the users aren't. The advertisers are, they evaluate the performance of their advertising and find it less worthwhile as fraud increases.

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