Social Media Want You to Buy Followers

A New York Times story about a company, Devumi, that has sold more than 200 million fake followers to second-tier celebrities and "influencers," has made a big splash; New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has tweeted that his office has opened an investigation into Devumi's "impersonation and deception." But the firm is just a tiny outfit with an office above a Mexican restaurant in West Palm Beach, Florida. What really needs to be investigated is to what extent social networks' user bases are fake and what benefits the giant companies that own them -- Facebook, Google, Twitter -- draw from the widespread fakery.

While The New York Times did a stellar job investigating Devumi, the Florida firm doesn't appear to be a particularly sophisticated player in the large market for social media fraud. It acquired Twitter bots wholesale from shadowy operations like Peakerr, Cheap Panel and YTbot and then retailed them with a huge markup to people too lazy to source the bots on their own.