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"In the influencer economy, you're paid in part for the size of your audience, which means that, if an influencer's account is swarming with fake followers, brands are paying extra to reach people who don't exist."

This is where we are at with this attempt by APPICS to infiltrate Steemit with followers they claim they are getting off of Instragram to integrate here on Steemit. How this is suppose to work is the people integrated followers will follow en-mass onto Steemit. But do those people really have the followings claimed? (If you read my prior post it's highly likely some don't even exist.) Not according to a Sept 9, 2019 article written on Wired, according to them...

On Instagram, manufacturing fake followers is a ubiquitous tactic, one that's churned out at least 95 million near-perfect human forgeries for you to brush past in the digital hallways, unaware.

So when @ soldier makes claims such as this:

The first new User I want to introduce to you is @melinaceline.

Melina is a well known Instagram Blogger with almost 1 million followers. She is curious about the blockchain technology and hungry to learn more.

The chances are better than not that this Instagram users bought her followers as it's as simple as this according to the article...

"You can buy them in droves from dozens of services online, or even from a coin-operated vending machine created by artist Dries Depoorter. He calls his fame dispenser " Quick Fix": a wall-mounted box with an Arduino and a keyboard, where visitors can type in their social media handles and select what faux honorific they'd like to receive—likes or follows, starting at just one euro, delivered instantly."

As a matter of fact it's not limited to just Instagram, just about anyone who wants to can do the exact same thing, including APPICS...

"The fake followers would fit in anywhere: padding out an obscure microinfluencer's ranks, creating the illusion of customers for a would-be T-shirt seller, skulking among legions of real fans on celebrity accounts like Ellen DeGeneres'. A report by cybersecurity firm Cheq projects that these fake fans will cost brands $1.3 billion in 2019 alone. In the influencer economy, you're paid in part for the size of your audience, which means that, if an influencer's account is swarming with fake followers, brands are paying extra to reach people who don't exist."

The article also further states...

"Agencies and would-be sponsors know they're being scammed, and are growing more vigilant. "In the last few years, we've started holding influencers accountable in their contracts," says Gabrielle Vogt, senior manager of digital talent at influencer marketing agency HelloSociety. "They have to agree that they haven't participated in comment pods, botting, or purchasing fake followers." Let's break down these forms of fakery. "Comment pods" (or "engagement pods") are groups of influencers who agree to like and comment on each other's posts to artificially drive up engagement and improve their algorithmic performance. "Botting" is using automated fake accounts—bots—to bolster an audience, à la the Kremlin-linked Internet Research Agency. In their contemporary form, "fake followers" are often real people, just not always the person they say they are, and, of course, not someone who is an actual fan (and hence, potential customer)."

The "pod" scenario is one that has popped up and been deployed here at Steemit. That's why when you read some comments by someone who you've followed and become accustom to the way they speak through written words you are wondering if they are drunk or all of a sudden sound like they developed an European or Middle Eastern overtone. Pay special attention to the "moderated" new curation trails and you shouldn't have a problem seeing it unfold.

When they are talking about being scammed, well, hey, for all of you who have been tarred and feathered the last few weeks after the change over in the hard folk for posting little to nothing of value and getting downvoted for it or bid bot it up for a few pennies to find retaliatory measure leveled against you in droves then you should be extremely upset that the woman depicted above made eight dollars and twenty four cents for posting that one picture and combined with another post of another picture she raked in over sixteen dollars of reward pool money. What you should be absolutely livid about is the fact that these women, if you look at the @ soldier account are being added at an alarming rate every single day. Each and every one of them taking pennies to dollars en mass out of the reward pool you so vehemently had your patties slapped over. And if the people you were onboarding curation rewards were going directly in your wallet as shown with the soldier account you'd be flagged beyond breathing here.

Let's look at what else we can find out from this article...

"Not being rubes, influencer economy participants know that signing a contract isn't enough to certify continuous truthfulness. That's why HelloSociety and most other influencer marketing businesses rely on online tools to sniff out counterfeit or fraudulent accounts—and influencers who profit from them. All of these tools (and there are many, with names like Social Audit Pro, IG Audit, Hypr, HypeAuditor, and Famoid) work a little differently, but they're all looking for deviations from the platform's norm. An account with no profile picture, say, or one that follows 10,000 people and never posts. Also suspicious: lots of digits in the username, or a person who seems to live in Turkey or Indonesia, but follows only California-based influencers."

Now lets take a look at that first sentence again..

"Not being rubes, influencer economy participants know that signing a contract isn't enough to certify continuous truthfulness."

"Influencer economy participants" that would be Steemit as APPICS wants to bring followers into our platform. What does Steemit base their truthfulness on? The plain fact that they met these people one time at a Steemfest and they were "really nice people". Well I'd say if signing a contract isn't enough to certify continuous truthfulness, which is much more binding, then being "really nice people" is hardly a qualifier as a continuous sign of truthfulness. I'd call that "influence peddling" more so than a qualifier to being truthful, you know, like the first time you do a meet up with a potential suitor off a dating site, of course he's going to peddle the best side of him before walking off with your money months later. You know my response to the person who said they met these people and they were really nice people?...I told him I could say I met the ceo's of Sears, ToyRus or any other number of corporations that went under and that they were really nice people, it's sad to hear they went under.

When you are going to partner with someone there is no reason at all that Steemit can't do a check to make sure they are bringing in the right people to share your reward pool money with. It's as simple as that, there are companies mentioned in the article that do exactly that and you should demand better from Steemit when it comes to your investment.

I didn't sign up for a APPICS account to go take a gander myself but I did slip on over to their Facebook page and what do you think I found?

The last post listed on top was done in Oct, 2017.

They had 4,101 followers.

A number of the pictures on the Facebook page are being integrated here into the Steemit system.

Their APPICS community list 702 members.

Their APPICS Korean members list 15 members.

Their APPICS Deutschland members list 119 members

Wow, they've had quite the success at peddling their influence over there. /s. Also made me wonder why if the people they are bringing here are so active on Instagram why do they feel compelled to post two year old pics of themselves.

Finally, let's get down to the APPICS token, which is now a SMT, listed on Steem-engine. Their APX coin is worthless. 120,864 tokens with no market cap, no price.

Hmmm...sounds to me like they need a infusion. Just because they were "really nice people" it sounds as though Steemit is going to let them get it from you. Quite frankly I don't really care EXCEPT there has to be a much greater effort put forth than allowing thousands of people to be onboarded here posting a picture and taking thousands away from those who work hard for their rewards or be seen as a total slap in the face to those who have been so punitively damaged the last few weeks doing the same thing these people are being allowed to do unabated.

The time to stand up and fight back would be now before it's too late. Please go take a look at the soldier account and see what you are about to be up against. Get the word out...resteem!

source: www.wired.com/story/instagram-fake-followers/?fbclid=IwAR1Gl-JEflydfeervQZ2wcH8IOVQRMEHK5wRj3YIKnVQqlAtFhOmsudoav4

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