• hark@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    Didn’t facebook fake numbers before for video views which caused e.g. collegehumor to fold because they thought they could rely on facebook for views?

    • ilinamorato@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      Absolutely. And Vice and Gawker, and to some extent even The Onion. Some survived, some did not. Dropout in particular is one of the few semi-success stories of it. It was called the “pivot to video,” and it’s almost a joke in online content communities now; especially since everyone on these platforms was saying, “we don’t want this!” even as Facebook was saying, “everyone wants this!”