Comment by nmfisher | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nmfisher | Hacker News Reader

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> Really? That's a "launch" these days? At least scrounge up a few hundred bucks and throw up some Facebook ads. Reddit and Hacker News have some of the most cynical and thrifty readers out there. Networking and getting the word out is half the battle. With such little effort put into the launch, OP could have been selling a dollar for fifty cents and no one would've cared.

Eh, I tried exactly this for a "thought bubble" project I had. Figured a landing page and $200 on ads would be the best way to gauge demand before writing any code.

Seemed like a great success - 50 or so e-mail signups, time to roll up my sleeves and start building! Until I looked closer and realized that every single signup was from a clearly fraudulent address. There's absolutely zero chance that they all just happened to be female, nicely formatted [firstname].[lastname]@gmail.com addresses.

Using ads to dip your toe in the water might have worked ten years ago, but there's just way too much fraud nowadays. I think you're better off finding your first ten users manually and asking very nicely for their time and feedback.

That was a few years ago, but I launched my app on the Play Store recently and noticed the exact same pattern. Definitely fake, too, because accounts were created in Firebase without user profiles (i.e. the app was never launched). I assume there are bot farms scanning new releases for certain packages (e.g. Firebase) and creating fake accounts.

I know there’s a lot of this, but what is the angle? Who is running the bot farms to click on Facebook ads and sign up for random services? And what are they hoping to achieve?

Kill competition? Boost Facebook stock price?

My wild assumption is that bot farms need to look like regular users, and therefore keep clicking on things even when they're off the clock. If Facebook has caught up on click farms that click on links but do nothing afterwards, I would assume that filling in some random data goes a long way to make bots harder to spot once your actual clients show up.

Yes, heard this theory before, think this makes the most sense

When you set up an ad on Facebook (and many other ad services), you can define a "conversion" (I'm more familiar with how google calls them, I'm not sure if that's what facebook calls it.). You can read about it here: https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/1722022. Then, you can set a target "Cost Per Action", which factors into your bids and therefore how much you spend on advertising and where you advertise. That's why if you're doing ad fraud, you'd want to take it all the way through to whichever action "counts".

That has to be it! That's the only explanation I've heard that really makes sense.

This kind of fraud benefits Facebook's competitors in the ad space by increasing the cost per customer acquired.

If someone clicks, signs up, and never pays, the conversion rate on the ad looks worse, and Facebook's targeting looks less valuable.

Facebook serves ads on other apps thru their Facebook Audience Network.

Bummer. Yeah, my idea was more along the lines of find my audience hanging out online and gently, subtly mention my product. Niche specific subreddits, forums (they still exist), Slack rooms, creating YouTube videos and others work pretty okay for initial traction for free.

I get so frustrated marketing like this. I've put weeks of my life into FOSS projects just to post them on reddit and have them immediately deleted because "self promotion".

If I can't post my FOSS to the linux subreddit then what in the world am I allowed to post?

> If I can't post my FOSS to the linux subreddit then what in the world am I allowed to post?

There is not enough information in your comment to judge correctly, but I would like to point out that it's not black and white.

You know what I hate about Hacker News lately? The green accounts that show up, post a link to their product (sometimes even making it to the front page), do not reply to comments, and exist only to keep spamming their own links. I also saw a post gain 16 upvotes even though they forgot to post the actual content.

If you regularly contribute to the linux subreddit, participate in discussions, and post interesting links from non-affiliated sources then yes, being deleted for "self promotion" sounds unfair. But if you only go there to promote your project then I'd also side with the mods.

The thing is that most of these submissions go nowhere on HN. So, what is actually the problem? Lousy submissions don’t get upvoted and no one is bothered. The problem on Reddit is that even legitimate submissions are taken down by nay-sayers despite being positive and getting legitimate upvotes, while submissions of links that lead to big companies’ websites don’t get nearly the same level of scrutiny.

It seems the best way these days is to get creative - Write a blog post that is interesting to the target audience and mention your product as an aside.

Exactly like this HN submission did.

Well, that largely depends on the subreddit and the context.

Always read the wiki before posting. When in doubt, ask moderators if they're OK with self-promotion.

Self-promotion doesn't mean you spam links left and right. Try to provide value first, and maybe at the end of your post/comment, link to your website.

My open source repo was inspired by conversations in the subreddit, and open source software doesn't do much besides provide value.

This is what happens when you direct link.

Ie FB ad - conversion.

Instead you want a showy FB ad that takes them to a landing page that looks like your website (native) to build trust, maybe have them answer some questions to get qualified etc. There's numerous ways to filter out "bad traffic".

Can you give an example?

I tried Facebook ads a year or two ago and got nothing but clicks from click farms in places like Pakistan. The volume of click farm fraud in online ads is staggering. It's totally worthless unless you are an expert at avoiding this and are paying close attention.

Do you know why they do that? I understand for ads (maybe your ads are shown at their property, so they get a cut). But what's with Firebase/Google Play?

Honestly, I have no clue. I've wondered if they're probing for unsecured Firebase database (for an encryption/ransom attack), or alternatively trying to generate enough seemingly legitimate activity for their "profiles" so the bots don't get detected at a later date.

> There's absolutely zero chance that they all just happened to be female, nicely formatted [firstname].[lastname]@gmail.com addresses.

That is my email address: [firstname].[lastname]@gmail.com

I'm not female though.

yea but if you got 50 inquiries from random people on the Internet interested in your product would you expect all or even most of them to be in the exact format firstname.lastname@gmail?

I'd expect most or even all of them to be from gmail but I'd be skeptical if they all followed the same naming convention, whether its first.last or something else.

That alone is at least mildly suspicious but it doesn't prove its not legitimate. However in this case he also used other data points to make that determination.

> There's absolutely zero chance that they all just happened to be female, nicely formatted [firstname].[lastname]@gmail.com addresses.

That makes you fraudulent these days? Man, my wife and I are screwed.

Apparently, you also need to be female; I am going to assume your wife is, but are you?

That’s clearly not what the parent post is suggesting. E-mail addresses on this format don’t make up 100% of all e-mail addresses in existence, so it’s suspicious when they make up 100% of your signups.

I’m not saying the email format alone means they were fake.

I’m saying that they were fake because all of them were formatted like that, registering within hours of being made available on the Play Store/AdWords, with zero external links and the app never actually being launched.

The odds are almost nil that they were legitimate users. It’s incredibly easy to spot, the email signups after the initial launch are far more “natural”, even those sharing the same format.

You are female then? The author used the word "all" also.

Have you heard of... lesbians?

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