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> I have a hard time seeing the difference between paying for likes vs paying for ads from an ethical stand point.

That's a bit like saying you don't see the difference between peeing in a toilet and peeing in someone's pool. You're relieving yourself either way, after all.

"Likes" are supposed to represent the sentiment of the real users. Ads are supposed to be advertising messages.

The two things are very different for a bunch of reasons. First, buying likes is straight up unethical because it's lying and gaming the system. Second, buying likes is harmful because it reduces the trustworthiness of likes.

I think your argument is valid, especially when considering an ideal scenario for these platforms.

Unfortunately, I haven't considered likes or even "star ratings" to be "real sentiment" in decades. Even without paid clicks, they rarely reflect quality and are often the result of many other factors. There are plenty of other dishonest methods to boost up your like value without paying for clicks.

> I haven't considered likes or even "star ratings" to be "real sentiment" in decades.

Yes, these things are a prime example of "the tragedy of the commons". But your question was about ethics, and I don't think this affects the ethics of the decision. That the commons may be trashed doesn't make it ethical to contribute to the trashing yourself.

Buying likes and buying ads are both ethical and unethical.

By buying ads you are trying to game a users newsfeeds without providing any value to the user (if highly liked content provides value, ads do not provide this value).

Buying likes is the same. It games a user's newsfeed but doesn't provide value.

To the user they are the same. To facebook they unethical because they are not paying them.

To the point around harmful the newsfeed itself is untrustworthy. Links were never trustworthy.

Ads provide value because they pay for it all. Isn't that valuable?

>Buying likes and buying ads are both ethical and unethical.

Sorry, in what way is buying likes ethical?

In what way is it unethical? No harm is done to anyone.

Facebook decided how things work and create this system with side effects. Finding a way around the rules facebook made does not make it unethical.

Likes are supposed/believed/intended to be a form of social proof by most people. Buying likes destroys that. So harm is done.

> No harm is done to anyone.

I disagree. I think harm is done to everyone who uses the site.

>In what way is it unethical? No harm is done to anyone.

I'm not sure what to say to you if you can't see it. No harm is done? Maybe you only imagine physical or financial harm. These aren't meaningless numbers in a vacuum; likes/followers are taken by people to indicate social importance or approval, they show how other people in the world feel and think about things (comments, pages, issues, opinions). A large part of the public sphere is in this form nowadays. Faking likes/followers/comments is deliberately misrepresenting yourself, fraudulent deception - lying.

Seems to me your argument would apply to faking or buying votes in an election, or TV ratings, or referendums or..faking corporation profits, buying fake stories in news media, or anything in the world where the numbers are diddled. "In what way is it unethical? No harm is done to anyone. There's this system with side effects. Finding a way around the rules does not make it unethical."

Imagine if voting and ranking on HN stories and comments was entirely determined by bought upvotes, downvotes, flagging, abuse reports etc. The site would be destroyed. And if the same thing happened on every forum of any kind online? "No harm done?"

It's mildly amusing in a frustrating way how we just assume that ads provide no value these days because ads and marketing in general have become synonymous with hostile psychological manipulation.

In theory (and ancient, pre-internet historical practice), ads can provide genuine value by informing people about the availability and properties of products.

Wether it’s right or not, likes are perceived as social validation.

When a company is buying likes, not only this is not disclosed but also gives a false sense of approval by a community which is not only deceiving for the customers but also unfair competition for businesses providing a similar product / service.

People expect that companies pay for their ads to be presented. A big reason for buying likes seems to be deceiving people into believing the posts aren't ads. I'd say it's similar to "sponsored content" that doesn't disclose the fact that it's sponsored

I think, at this point it is safe to assume that on any platform where individual content can be promoted via a crowdsourced upvote, including star ratings and "likes", much of what rises to the top is manipulated in some way, often sponsored (paid for) by a commercial interest. This includes FB posts and Amazon reviews, but also comments on reddit and even HN comments and articles. I would love to see internal reports from these companies about what % of each platform's accounts and/or activity they estimate to be automated, botted, farmed, fraudulent, etc. but for obvious reasons nobody seems to be willing to regularly publish this information!

Not percentages, but actual numbers of reports and suspicious account challenges: https://transparency.twitter.com/en/platform-manipulation.ht...

I stand corrected. Great job, Twitter!

People buy likes because of price and reach. If the price of ads and the reach were similiar this wouldn't exist.

Who thought like would be a good gauge without dislke is beyond me. Dislike would provide a way to display displeasure and drop the value of the orginal like.

> Dislike would provide a way to display displeasure and drop the value of the orginal like.

And would double the business of the like factories, because they would expand into doing paid dislikes as well.

The difference is the disclosure. Only on the other you know that money is being used to affect your opinion on something.

Excellent point. Though it can be easy to miss the tiny text that says "advertisement".

I recall buying Facebook ads for places in the early days of their system that benefited off this & having it say which friends also liked this content.

> I would consider paid ads, paid likes, paid comments, etc., to be unethical if the content they're supporting is false.

That's not a very useful statement. What if it's in support of an opinion? Advertisements are rarely just a list of facts and likes

> TLDR: What's the difference between paying Facebook/Google/etc for an ad vs paying someone else to like your post? The 2nd seems like a better solution for a majority of people.

The difference is pretty clear, one is purchasing a real ad on a real platform. The other is paying for fake interactions to project a false response to something.

Don't know why you were downvoted but...

> What if it's in support of an opinion?

I think opinions are great if they state their claims and reasons in a respectful manner and don't throw out very false narratives on purpose.

> ...real ad on a real platform. The other is paying for fake interactions to project a false response..

You're right. I'm jaded and feel I'm over advertised to on search engines, blogs & social media platforms. I feel they're shoved down your throat & ruin the quality of the platform. I feel a lot of ads or "sponsored posts" try their hardest to hide the fact that it's an ad. They often blur the lines of accurate claims. I don't even need to go down the route of "influencer" or "affiliate links" that hide it even more. At one time in my life, I felt there was a clear distinction between ads & authentic word of mouth promotion of an item. That was probably way back when TV blurred out logos. I haven't felt that way in a long time. I believe "real ad" is such a gray area these days that I am having a hard time seeing anything wrong with regular people making money off this advertisement hysteria instead of companies. Especially since most of the companies in question here are doing highly unethical things with their user's data.

You can take the above paragraph & state 2 wrongs don't make a right or point out several fallacies made. At the end I would argue that the paid likes are only a small part of a larger problem of advertisements. Yes I would like to see paid likes become irrelevant but I think there are bigger issues.

An ad is a message designed to force the user to hear a certain message. Hopefully invoke associations to other real things.

A real ad is the same as a fake ad. They are all just ads. It doesn't matter who you pay. They do the same thing.

> A real ad is the same as a fake ad.

We're talking about fake likes. An ad without purchased likes is clearly not the same as an ad with purchased likes. One has a genuine representation of response and the other does not. Who you pay does matter as one is a legitimate ad and the other is at worst posing as a legitimate ad, but possibly also a real ad that has been given inflated numbers via purchased likes.

One is trying to operate within the system, the other is trying to game it. Not the same thing and who you pay obviously does matter. Just because they may have a similar purpose doesn't make them the same...

That is actually one of the interesting things about social media as a political platform. This wasn't possible at the same level with television or radio advertising because of the fact that "posts" and "likes" are often by essentially complete anonymous strangers online. The troll farm levels being what they currently are I think people would do well to take all numbers and advertisements they see online with a grain of salt until these issues are more settled.