Do Social Media Platforms Like Fake Metrics?

I read an interesting article yesterday discussing the phenomena of artificial web traffic being used to boost ad prices. 

This got me thinking about social media and artificial metrics/traffic. I remember reading about how Facebook regularly deletes swaths of “fake” Facebook accounts, used by companies (who charge Facebook page admins money) to create fake metrics for Facebook pages. There are several online services that do this. But what if there was a way to boost traffic without using advertising/marketing nor faking it completely? 

Soundcloud is a social media site for musicians (and just about anyone who creates audio content) to share their work. Having a lot of plays and comments on Soundcloud is just as important, if not more, than having high numbers on Facebook for musicians. One unique service that provides users with extra plays and feedback for their work is Cloudkillers. This company doesn’t use fake accounts to generate fake metrics, but instead allows users to use listen to songs on other users’ Soundcloud accounts via a portal, and for every comment they leave, they earn a point. The more comments you leave, the more points you earn. And the more points you earn, then more users will leave you comments. Cloudkillers encourages people to truly listen to the song and give real feedback, and those who “spam” comment are banned. Cloudkillers earns revenue by charging people money to let them earn more points faster. It’s a pretty crafty system. The traffic is from real people with real accounts, but not necessarily 100% genuine. 

Cloudkillers is somewhat of a mix of buying advertising and fake traffic. I have experimented with Cloudkillers in the past (I’m a music producer by night). Does it work well? Yes. Is it ethical? Maybe, maybe not. But my sense of accomplishment is diminished when I’ve used Cloudkillers enough to the point where I’ve chosen not to use it.

Ok now I’m going to get to the point of this whole blog entry: I wonder how social media sites feel about these fake metric services. When you first think about it, it makes sense that social media sites would do all they could to block people from utilizing these illegitimate services. But actually, wouldn’t it make sense for facebook and sound cloud and others to like what these services do? Not only do they help out individual users by making them seem more popular, but these services are also inflating the numbers for the platforms themselves. If all the fake comments and plays on Soundcloud could instantly be deleted, Soundcloud would probably lose a large portion of it’s total activity. It might sound kind of “conspiracy theory-ish” but what if these platforms were intentionally staying their ability to cut these services out of their users’ toolkit. It makes a lot of sense for them to appreciate these fake metric services.