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Comment by WA | Hacker News Reader

That was a good write-up. Thing is, this works. Even (or especially) for startups. Only if to kickstart the hype a bit. Real followers and likes will follow, but let's be honest here: Who doesn't automatically trust a business that has 19K Twitter followers and a few good reviews out there?

From the article: And these days, which is more real: a fake business with a real website or a brick and mortar business with no online presence?

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I think it's the reverse that's more insidious. Who doesn't automatically distrust a business with just 24 likes?

Creates a situation where you almost have to buy some fakes to get to perception neutrality where real likes will follow.

> Real followers and likes will follow, but let's be honest here: Who doesn't automatically trust a business that has 19K Twitter followers and a few good reviews out there?

For now. As more companies cheat the system, people will be less likely to trust them based on things like followers and reviews.

Currently I don't trust the reviews of lots of physical businesses in my area. In my experience places with few reviews tend to be more reliable than those with many. My theory is that customers of physical businesses are more likely to leave reviews of negative experiences and that businesses respond with fake reviews. This is because there is a high 'activation energy' to making an online review of a place that you normally walk into and that only really angry customer bother. I tend to trust e.g. App store reviews more because the barrier to entry to leaving a review is lower so real positive reviews seem to happen more.

I find this sad.

Reminds me of reddit, and their fake users to start it off.

The thing is that the internet is so biased towards incumbents, you need to cheat a little to get the initial pull.

To me there's a big difference between real activity under multiple "fake" names, where content is still being submitted, and artificially raising the profile of one's company by just buying fake reviews (or followers or likes, which are basically micro-reviews of approval). Just like there's a difference between paying to have Facebook promote your page to real users, who can then decide whether or not they would like your page or status on their own, from just paying directly for the likes.

I remember reading a research paper on how liking a post for initial two or three time could greatly increase the probability of the post actually taking off. I can't find the exact paper now though, so if anyone can remember reading a similar one, can you please link it?

Same kinda thing with reddit/HN- getting one or two upvotes within the first couple minutes of posting is essental to a post getting anywhere. It keeps the post afloat long enough for people to notice it, instead of getting lost with everything else.

Why would I trust a company's carefully curated Facebook and Twitter marketing pages any more than I would the company's advertisements that tell me how awesome they are?

As an example, reddit kickstarted the hype quite well, and see, now they're worth 500 million ;)

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