On Click Farms and Black Twitter: Political Economies of Social Media

As social media grows, businesses and topics of the world are expanding. Businesses now exploit users by creating this thing called a “click farm”. A click farm is essentially a group of trolls, or people who get paid under waged for sitting around and clicking on advertisements. YouTube can be a good example of this because many users make money off of the number of times the advertisements are being clicked on. This is where these click farms come. People sit around in front of a screen and just click on advertisements. In this context, businesses are getting aid to expand their brand. However, I see this as a fraud and very unfair that there are actually people who are getting under paid to do this work while businesses gain so much.

This video shows three Chinese men who get arrested for operating a click farm. Some may think that there is nothing wrong in operating a click farm because

1. Trolls accept that they are getting paid a certain amount and choose to do this as a job.
2. Businesses are getting money from people who agree to do this job.

So in a way, there is nothing wrong since both parties are okay with this agreement. However, clicks can help create revenue, but it can also help politicians get more followers or make it seem like they have more followers than they actually do. And this kind of is deceiving to others. The article that went along with the video above also discusses how these three men did not have a permit, meaning they did not pay taxes.

Now, if we go back to the states and talk about how social media is affecting America, Black Twitter is a good place to start. First of all, Black Twitter is a hashtag that originated from social media platform Twitter when injustice was being brought to the black community. This hashtag, when searched up, is a collective series of tweets that primarily Black Americans post.

This type of virtual community that Black Twitter has created has helped spread awareness about what is going on in the news, with a different perspective that the hegemonic point of view on tv news stations.

Social media itself does not contain political views but the people behind it add information that do. I think that this is a good way for people to share their opinions.