from Hacker News

Why do we assume like and view numbers in social media are correct?

by anon1199022 on 10/4/23, 12:26 PM with 8 comments

• by blakesterz on 10/4/23, 1:11 PM

  VergeCast just did a pretty decent discussion on this recently:

  https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/27/23892279/today-on-the-ver...

  And an article on The Verge: Lies, Damned Lies, and Social-Media Metrics Those view counts on Twitter, TikTok, and Netflix? Be skeptical.

  https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/09/those-view-counts-on...

• by everdrive on 10/4/23, 1:10 PM

  Well I think most people already assume they can be inflated. It sounds like you’re suggesting that platforms might just hit a button and “gift” a video 1 million views. Currently, they’re certainly already gamed, but this gaming is done the hard way: promoting videos, putting them on the user’s front page, etc.

  I’m not in the industry, but I would imagine that companies cannot just invent view counts out of thin air because it would represent the defrauding of their advertising customers. The views can be “faked” any other way they like, so long as they views actually occurred. Advertisers don’t care if the system was gamed so long as they’re getting eyeballs on ads.

• by deciduously on 10/4/23, 1:07 PM

  I personally don't assume any such thing.

• by Zak on 10/4/23, 1:09 PM

  As I recall, TikTok was known to lie about them to give people the impression there were getting more attention there than on competing platforms.

• by hx55 on 10/4/23, 1:13 PM

  If there are a million how to make apple pie videos and you claim you can rank it, you lie. The whole story is a lie.

• by drcongo on 10/4/23, 1:29 PM

  I've never met a single person who assumes they're correct. They've been proven false many times.