Out of their own mouths, they refer to themselves as corrupted or easily influenced.
This is the social media generation, the millenials I guess.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04mz9dt

If you listen to this you will hear how a whole swag of operators have recruited users of twitter/whatsapp/snapchat who have built up substantial followings to "subversively" promote products & services.
The viewers as a rule don't realise this is happening because it's done in a hidden way, such as buried in a joke. They probably don't even recognise the regulatory signposts required to be included in the tweets etc, such as #ad or #sp.

And the young people interviewed on here by an experienced financial journalist realise that they would allow themselves to be manipulated.

One wonders if social media will slowly kill itself by morphing into digital classifieds.

Bogarde, I have to admit that I'm always drawn to your posts because they are generally very interesting. I rarely agree with your angle, but in this case, I am in wholehearted agreement.



bogarde73 wrote on Jan 14^th, 2017 at 12:27pm:

If you listen to this you will hear how a whole swag of operators have recruited users of twitter/whatsapp/snapchat who have built up substantial followings to "subversively" promote products & services. The viewers as a rule don't realise this is happening because it's done in a hidden way, such as buried in a joke.

It's for this reason I think that Gruen http://www.abc.net.au/tv/programs/gruen/ should be compulsory viewing, especially in schools.


Quote:

We're still the show that analyses what most other shows are there to sell: advertising. But we're also the show that knows you can't click on a link without surrendering all your personal data to a corporation trying to sell you shampoo. Gruen will run an X-Ray over advertising, spin, branding, positioning and image control, wherever they are found. The selling of ideas and products will always amuse, bewilder, and irrationally annoys us but now it's more sophisticated, targeted and occasionally downright creepy. Mostly it just understands you better, so we're here to provide you with the tools to understand it.

I'm sure the corporate sponsors of commercial TV would never let this program be shown on a commercial network.

I'm glad you find it interesting because I usually only post things that interest me, unless I'm trying to provoke and annoy people.

While there is a lot of downside to the online world, at the same time it has enabled us to quickly get access to a wealth of information and sources we just couldn't get before.