Manipulating the Herd
There is a great article in Wired - Herding the Mob.
I've already talked about my problems with the Wisdom of the Herd before - and my recent explorations of propaganda and disinformation do nothing to convince me that following the "bleater" like a flock of sheep is going to produce a "better society" ..
I'm going to list the Wired categories and nothing more - if you are interested you know where to find it ...
Four ways to manipulate the mobThe Buddy System (e.g. digg)
Users organise into groups to vote up one and other's stories.
Geek Baiting (e.g. Digg, Reddit & del.icio.us)
Companies publish geek friendly articles that have nothing to do with their business. The Goal: to drive traffic to an ad-filled Web site
Network for Hire (e.g. digg)
Clients hire scamming firms to promote their articles. These outfits recruit networks of uses willing to sell their votes
Pump-and-chump (e.g. eBay)
Retailers earn a good reputation selling insexpensive products, then defraud customers on more upscale items.
But I have to add:
Search Engine Bombing (e.g Google Bombing)Many people create pages that link keywords with other keywords i..e "George Bush" and "failure".
SEO Optimisation (e.g. White Hat SEO)
Uses a "black box" techniqiue to explore Search Engine algorithms and optimise pages for high rankings within the scope of the terms of service.
"Blackhat" SEO Optimisation (e.g. Black Hat SEO)
Uses a "black box" techniqiue to explore Search Engine algorithms and optimise pages for high rankings - but soutside scope of the terms of service.
"Spam Blogs" (e.g. Splogs)
Uses the "blog technique" to build links and "Spam the Herd" - uses all of the above techniques to good effect on digg, reddit and del.icio.us ..
Why am I not surpised that the Internet is being polluted by this kind of thing? After all if there is money to be made - then people follow the money.
Anyway "gaming the herd" has been staple of human societies ever since they first invented politicians and priests
Tags: wisdom of the herd, crowdhacking, wired, digg, reddit, delicious, spam, spamblogs, seo, blackhat seo, propaganda, spamming the herd