How much of the Internet is fake? Turns out, a lot of it

[mouser]

It's not a bug, it's a feature.. The more clicks and views (fake or not), the more money can be made from advertisers.

How much of the internet is fake? Studies generally suggest that, year after year, less than 60 percent of web traffic is human; some years, according to some researchers, a healthy majority of it is bot. For a period of time in 2013, the Times reported this year, a full half of YouTube traffic was “bots masquerading as people,”

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/12/how-much-of-the-internet-is-fake.html

[Curt]

😢

[rgdot]

I am real though 

On a serious note interesting that you posted

The more clicks and views (fake or not), the more money can be made from advertisers.

I have said for a long (pretty sure on DC too) that one of the biggest problems with the web model is that ad viewing is often not enough (may be video sites like youtube are the only places where views are at least some percentage of income). It works on tv, where payment is made based on views/ratings only, why not on the web. This model encourages fake activity, even on a forum like DC where bots hope to get links indexed AND clicked on.