I'd suggest legislation. It's like when hotels or rental car companies tack on additional fees and consumers hate it but don't have much incentive to cooperate to change it. Consumers don't unionize much, but maybe we should?
But maybe not legislation, because it might upset a ton of people. Any time a social media site goes through and seems to get rid of bots, people complain about how many "followers" they've lost. The fake user/clicker situation is quite pervasive, and a lot of parties, not just the advertising networks, benefit from the inflated numbers.
But it can be so insidious..."wow, that video got 1M YouTube views? Must be very popular!" Orrrr a lot of those views were from bots? Who knows?
So maybe a better approach than legislation is to talk about how the ad/bot fraud can both help us and hurt us and not demonize one side but see how we all may be implicated in it somehow. Maybe that will help us to be more aware of the problem and not fight against people, but try to work together to solve it.
But maybe not legislation, because it might upset a ton of people. Any time a social media site goes through and seems to get rid of bots, people complain about how many "followers" they've lost. The fake user/clicker situation is quite pervasive, and a lot of parties, not just the advertising networks, benefit from the inflated numbers.
But it can be so insidious..."wow, that video got 1M YouTube views? Must be very popular!" Orrrr a lot of those views were from bots? Who knows?
So maybe a better approach than legislation is to talk about how the ad/bot fraud can both help us and hurt us and not demonize one side but see how we all may be implicated in it somehow. Maybe that will help us to be more aware of the problem and not fight against people, but try to work together to solve it.