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The Flourishing Business of Fake YouTube Views (nytimes.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Martin Vassilev makes a good living selling fake views on YouTube videos. Working from home in Ottawa, he has sold about 15 million views so far this year, putting him on track to bring in more than $200,000, records show. Mr. Vassilev, 32, does not provide the views himself. His website, 500Views.com, connects customers with services that offer views, likes and dislikes generated by computers, not humans. When a supplier cannot fulfill an order, Mr. Vassilev -- like a modern switchboard operator -- quickly connects with another. "I can deliver an unlimited amount of views to a video," Mr. Vassilev said in an interview. "They've tried to stop it for so many years, but they can't stop it. There's always a way around."
[...] Just as other social media companies have been plagued by impostor accounts and artificial influence campaigns, YouTube has struggled with fake views for years. The fake-view ecosystem of which Mr. Vassilev is a part can undermine YouTube's credibility by manipulating the digital currency that signals value to users. While YouTube says fake views represent just a tiny fraction of the total, they still have a significant effect by misleading consumers and advertisers.
[...] Just as other social media companies have been plagued by impostor accounts and artificial influence campaigns, YouTube has struggled with fake views for years. The fake-view ecosystem of which Mr. Vassilev is a part can undermine YouTube's credibility by manipulating the digital currency that signals value to users. While YouTube says fake views represent just a tiny fraction of the total, they still have a significant effect by misleading consumers and advertisers.
Bad phrasing: Credibility of youtube content vs credibility of youtube stats
Google search doesn't even return relevant results anymore but more results that may look like what you ask. Soon just expect that an AI will generate the results on the fly SCIgen style.
Now they even remove keywords from your query to get more irrelevant matches from higher scored sites.
Also the +"" or intext: tags are basically ignored and worse if you insist they start throwing captchas at you.
Unfortunately you will be one of those few people who notice, may be poining it out a couple more will also realize, like when you point out about bad kerning.
If those that demand no Voter Identification were concerned for the poor, they'd facilitate the acquisition of ID, not seek ways to avoid it. After all, what's the best job you ever had where you didn't need to identify yourself?
Only ONE party disapproves of measures to make our elections secure, and also your president lied to you. Voter ID is NOT a function of America's "racist past". EVERY COUNTRY THAT'S not a dictatorship has some form of assuring that the person voting is entitled to. EVERY COUNTRY.
NAACP requires photo ID to attend anti-voter-ID protest march
Indian citizens have voter ID and they are buttfuck poor, much poorer than the worst of the American poor.
California liberals allege voter fraud, demand voter ID. Democrats think voter identification laws are important for their party elections, but think they're not important when it comes to our elections.
Maxine Waters, an advocate against voter ID, requires an ID to attend her town hall meeting.
Hillary Clinton's Book Tour. Valid Photo ID Required. Suppressing minority turnout, or is this one of those things that's OK when Democrats do it but wrong when anyone else does it?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
You don't need "thousands". Al Franken got into Senate with (officially) 312 votes — and this allowed the passing of Obamacare.
Earlier, Bush won Florida with a similarly sub-thousand majority — also dramatically affecting the entire nation's life... A few is enough.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
You're saying that the poor are too stupid to get their voter-ID card, and the "depressed minorities via disenfranchisement" are too incompetent to get a voter-ID card. Good old bigotry and racism of low expectations.
So is Canada a racist country because you MUST present ID in order to vote? Or is this issue only racist because it directly correlates to the US, thus any form of security of elections is automatically racist, because again those people are too stupid, or too poor to get voter ID.
Om, nomnomnom...
Canada does not have the same history of institutionalized racism that we had in the South. Many US states used various election rules as an attempt to restrict voting by minorities - this is basic grade school history. Such as requirements to have paid a poll tax (except if your grandfather voted), literacy tests, and so forth. The states pushing hardest for voter ID laws just happen to those that also engaged in disenfranchisement of minorities during segregation. To many people, any election move by a former unapalogetic segregationist state is viewed with high suspicion.
So based on history, any attempt to have a mandatory fee to vote or obtain a voting token is suspicious, or anything resembling past literacy tests, and so forth. Anyone who is surprised that minorities are wary of such moves has clearly not studied history.
Voting is a right, not a privilege.