Rising Instagram Stars Are Posting Fake Sponsored Content | Hacker News Reader

Rising Instagram Stars Are Posting Fake Sponsored Content

theatlantic.com

71 pointsundefined138 comments

So finally we've come full cycle. The wannabe "influencer" with his fake "followers" bought 1$ a pound on fiverr, is posting fake "sponsored content", so social media "marketers" would perceive him as valuable enough to (fakely) promote their (probably faked) product. I ran out of double-quotes, you could legitly double-quote any other word up there.

The question is what should be the next logical step?

brands stop paying because influencers doing it for free

People realizing that marketing is all smokes and mirrors BS and starting to not give a crap, and instead buying things from local producers and manufacturers based on how it contributes to and benefits their own community.

It’s the holiday season, please let me dream :-)

For a dream that is depressingly minor! How about people stop buying things they don't need. Lost crafts of fixing things are thriving again. As result, elderly are re-introduced into society as they have the lost knowledge. Deurbanization starts when people discover they can't grow their own food on concrete. The 9-5 day slowly shifts back to a dynamic sunrise-to-sunset schedule. Cars are banned from small communities because emission degrades the local crops. As a result, kids rediscover they can safely play outside, without the limiting supervision of adults. That starts a positive feedback loop that collapses the (a)social networks, and as a byproduct the whole economy of attention.

A sunrise sunset schedule would mean working more hours than I currently do.

That lifestyle is sustainable for preindustrial population levels.

I really thought nobody could be influenced by this stuff for a moment. But damn, it works well. I think it'll take a few years until we all wake up.

Brands crate their own AI-rendered influencers, so they have complete control.

So Miquela? https://instagram.com/lilmiquela

Honestly, I wasn't expecting this when I clicked on this story, but for me the next logical step ended up being to promise myself I will not read a single article about or sourced from instagram ever again.

I realized I removed the app to get away from it, and that I'm only reading about it because other people haven't. They're just looking for interesting ways to write about where they spend their time. I don't actually have to read this stuff just because it shows up here. I get that now.

Thank you!

A fake internet, with real names, vs a real internet with pseudonyms, 10-15 years ago. Interesting. Maybe one of those things need to be fake to keep the universe in equivalent exchange.

I've always been fascinated with the paths and lives of hustlers and con men, people who (try to) make a living misleading others about their success and credentials. Obviously this is as old as humanity itself, and it always makes for a good story. Social engineering is fascinating.

Anybody remember good old https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impossible_Is_Nothing_(video_r... from the dark ages of the Internet?

The role of "confidence man" used to be relegated to a small few with enough brains to pull it off and not enough morality to stop them.

Now, those select few con men have been using the internet to teach masses of wannabes that are too dumb to come up with the con, and too deluded to realize the immorality of what they are doing.

Why give them (and their industry) the respect they so desperately crave by calling them influences and brand ambassadors when the English language already has an entire cornucopia of applicable organic words describing this phenomenon.

Shill, plant, phoney, stooge, wannabe, peddler.

Don't let the marketers win :p

This feels like a scene straight out of Idiocracy. The brands must be pleasantly confused.

Haha, this is great. It’s a race to the bottom because most influencers aren’t providing anything unique: One is as good as another for the number of people they reach.

It's all a sham. It amazes me that some people simply need to be attractive, wealthy, live an impossible lifestyle or all three and make hundreds of thousands of dollars from brands on a social media platform.

Many of these people hang on every update to Instagram, to the point that, eventually, the platform will be too big to fail.

I'd love to see the day when Instagram vanishes and all the influencers who put all their eggs in the filtered baskets are knocked back to reality.

Not surprising. If sponsored content is a signifier of success, people will fake it.

Meet the fake shill. A sad byproduct of consumerism.

Sometimes I'm suprised at society. Then I'm annoyed at my surprise. Then I tell myself not everybody is like this.

From the article: "If someone who is 20 years old watching YouTube or Instagram sees these people traveling with brands, promoting brands, I don’t see why they wouldn’t do everything they could to get in on that.”

-- It's interesting to see quotes like this, especially in the context of the "everything bubble". 2019 is going to be economically horrendous, these people won't survive.

> these people won't survive.

I already said it in another comment, but I'd love to see what would happen if Instagram just shuts downs or if they are impacted heavily by the incoming recession.

Will this ultimately lower the revenue from sponsored content if so many people are tripping over themselves to pay companies to post their content?

> Though it may seem like a useful tactic when you’re starting out, more established influencers worry that fake sponcon is creating a race to the bottom. Because brands can piggyback off of waves of unpaid influencer promoters, some have ceased paying influencers completely, or now pay rates far below what they previously spent.

That’s what the article says but articles say a lot of things and I’d rather hear from someone more enlightened...

Smells like an FCC regulation waiting to happen.

Sounds very difficult to regulate. It's not actually advertising, so what regulations are people actually breaking?

> Smells like an FCC regulation waiting to happen

I don't see a problem. Users want influencers backed by brands. Brands want influencers with lots of users.

Unless the influencer falsely represents their sponsorship history to a brand, this "hack" doesn't hurt anyone. The worst-off party are users. They follow someone they think is shilling products but is actually shilling themselves. Given this is Instagram, I don't see that as a huge problem.

Most of the time this doesn't hurt anyone, but let's say for the sake of argument that one of these influencers isn't a mildly attractive middle-class teenage girl with thoughts that don't extend beyond family friendly fun and self-enrichment.

Let's say instead you have a 25 year old man who started out with inspirational instagram posts have slowly started to cross the line into far-right slogans and maga hats. Now you don't just have some randomer endorsing your product, suddenly your family friendly business is being accused of been forking money over to neo-nazis.

Are you suggesting some law preventing individuals from commenting on products and services unless they're being paid to do so?

Or only if the company providing those goods/services doesn't like what is being said, or who is saying it?

At the very least people need to be liable for consequences that might occur to the victim company if they are falsely representing themselves as being sponsored by them.

Freedom of speech doesn't cover false representations.

Your example is a little misguided...

You mean FTC (T=Trade).

News at 11.

Well, on a positive note, since they pay for those products themselves, they can write off the cost from their taxes.

#thot_patrol

https://www.reddit.com/r/thot_patrol/

I like justice porn as much as anybody else, but I wonder if some of these outlets become more about venting one's misogyny, more than about pointing out wrongdoing?

Lots of people out there who ascribe their grievances to a group of "others", be that immigrants, ethnicities, genders etc. I can see those channels turning into a confirmation bias echo chamber pretty quick.

IMO, it is just misogyny. They don't target the equivalent esports and gaming personalities (mostly male) who do the same thing, and it's couched in the language of "thots" instead of, you know, something thats not a derogatory term for women. Plus, I find it really hard to believe that most of these people actually care about fair taxation -- are they also informing the IRS about the kid on their block making money mowing lawns, or their server friends not reporting their cash tips? Give me a break.

It's literally just misogyny. It has absolutely nothing to do with taxes and everything to do with putting women in their place.

I mean, the fourth most upvoted post on there celebrates the indiscriminate death of thousands of women. Absolutely disgusting. It's just a group of men celebrating the fact that they hate all women simply for existing.

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