There really shouldn’t be much surprise upon hearing
that a lot of views and follows amongst
billion dollar companies and celebrities on YouTube and Twitter, as for the
most part , both YouTube and Twitter are both corporate entities whose interest
in social communication and the building of authentic networks come a distant
second to excessive self-promotion and the deception of millions of people.
Thanks to a crackdown by YouTube and Google (owners of
YouTube), we have seen that a lot of views, especially music labels, have had
fake view counts going into the billions as music industry behemoth Universal
Music Group “los 1 billion of its 7 billion views” which is nothing compared
to the monumental losses of views experienced by Sony “who lost 850 million
views”[1].
The surprise about this story
is not that so many views were fake but why Google waited for so long to audit
the views of its users. It’s no shock that prominent YouTube channels would use
fake views in a bid fool YouTube viewers that they are more popular than they actually are in reality. While the channels who saw the biggest cull in viewership are
billion dollar companies, there is an air of fraud about the whole affair as advertisers have been fooled confirming the skepticism among ad
men that using the internet is the best way to waste an ad budget.This growing skepticism affects
other YouTube channels ad revenue as they get tarred with the same brush.
However this debacle hasn’t affected everybody as breakout hits like ‘Gangnam Style’
“is still dancing along at 1 billion views, a YouTube record”[2].
While YouTube have decided to
crack down on the use of fake view counts, celebrities on twitter have been
less than honest about the views generated on their twitter accounts. Fake views
building on twitter is so perverse that even the United States President’s
twitter account has been accused of using fake followers[3].
Forbes compiled a list of celebrities and public figures with fake followers with
the list dominated by musicians with superstars Rihanna, Justin Timberlake,
Katy Perry and Justin Bieber making an appearance[4].
The use of fake accounts on
twitter is ridiculous that even twitter’s own account features on the list[5].
However, this is no shock as twitter doesn’t monitor or get rid of accounts
which are clearly fake. Typical of capitalism, this is all being driven by a
growing industry benefiting from the laziness of celebrities to build real
social networks which offer to build well followed twitter account and fast at
a price.
In sum, the growth of fake
YouTube and Twitter viewers and followers is perverse as it affects those users
who have built their following or viewers organically by reducing ad revenue as
it adds more evidence to the suggestion that social media sites are bad platforms
to promote a product. However this has become systemic as both YouTube and twitter
have done very little to combat the growth of fake views and followers.
[1]
Huffington Post, 2012, Fake YouTube Views Cut By 2 Billion As Google Audit
Record Companies Video Channels, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/29/fake-youtube-views-cut-google-audit_n_2380848.html
[2]
Ibid
[3] J.
Greathouse, 2012, Celebrities With The Most
(Allegedly) Fake Twitter Followers, http://www.forbes.com/sites/johngreathouse/2012/08/27/celebrities-with-the-most-allegedly-fake-twitter-followers/
[4] Ibid
[5]
Ibid
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