This is at least as old as the Digg Payola schemes. Digg had cartels that would massive boost the upvotes of some content and then bury other content. They'd also go and astroturf in the comments on those upvoted posts to artificially boost engagement.
Comments
This is at least as old as the Digg Payola schemes. Digg had cartels that would massive boost the upvotes of some content and then bury other content. They'd also go and astroturf in the comments on those upvoted posts to artificially boost engagement.
I was definitely gaming Digg circa 2006, so I can confirm this.
Shit, I ran a torrent site. I was gaming all the torrent search engines to get traffic to my site.