This topic from the Hive learners table is a very interesting one
Now if you look at it from one angle, you could easily say, Well, it isn't hurting anybody, after all, if someone decides to buy fake followers, fake likes, fake streams, or fake comments, it looks like they are only deceiving themselves, But then, when the more I think about it, the more I realize that even though it may not be directly hurting someone physically, it is still fake, because people tend to believe that it is real, that is where the problem starts.
These days, many people judge success by numbers, if someone has one million followers, people immediately assume they are influential, if a video has millions of views, people automatically think it must be good, If a musician has millions of streams, people believe the song is a massive hit.
Most people do not stop to ask whether those numbers are actually genuine, they simply believe what they see, that is why some people spend money buying fake engagement, they know that once people see those numbers, many will automatically assume they are popular, but personally, I don't think buying fake followers is something I would do, it just doesn't sit right with me, I would rather have one thousand real followers who genuinely enjoy my content than one hundred thousand fake followers who are nothing more than bots,at least I know the support is real, the funny thing is that fake numbers don't always give real results.
A person may have a million followers but struggle to get even a few genuine comments from actual people, sometimes brands even notice these things, a page can have huge numbers but very little engagement, and that immediately raises questions.
So in the long run, those fake numbers don't really help as much as people think they do, now, should it be criminalized? Honestly, I don't know if I would go that far, I don't think someone should automatically become a criminal because they bought fake followers, there are many bigger issues in society that deserve that level of attention, however, I do think there should be consequences, especially when fake numbers are used to deceive people for financial gain.
For example, if someone uses fake followers to convince companies to pay huge amounts of money for advertisements, then that becomes dishonest, the company believes they are paying to reach real people when, in reality, a large percentage of the audience doesn't even exist.
That is unfair.
In the bigger picture, I think fake engagement slowly damages trust on the internet, people no longer know what is genuine and what has been manipulated.
Creators who have worked hard to build real audiences may even be overlooked because someone else appears more successful through fake numbers.
That does not feel right either, at the end of the day, I don't think fake followers are necessarily hurting people in the way crimes usually do, but they do create a false picture of reality, they make people believe something that is not true, and once enough people begin believing fake things, it becomes harder to tell what is actually real.
For me, I will always choose real growth over fake popularity, it may take longer, and it may not look as impressive at first, but at least I know that it is genuine and in the end, real people will always be worth more than the fake numbers.
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