Glossary of productive play
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Click farm
As online engagement became currency, click farms exploit workers in order to mass produce fraudulent user interactions.
Definition
A form of click fraud where a large group of low-paid workers are hired to click on paid advertising links for the click farmer. The workers click the links, surf the target website for a period of time, and possibly sign up for newsletters prior to clicking another link. It is extremely difficult for an automated filter to detect this simulated traffic as fake because the visitor behavior appears exactly the same as that of an actual legitimate visitor.
Context
Click farms are used by all sorts of businesses, often to inflate their following or engagement, and they can be hired to do multiple actions such as:
Services offered by click farms can include:
- Social media followers and likes
- Posting comments on websites or social media
- Generating website traffic
- Creating backlinks
- Carrying out repetitive click based tasks
- Channelling traffic to fraudulent sites to increase rankings, domain authority or to collect payouts on display ads
- Sharing , often fake, news articles (troll factories)*
With the majority of the world’s click farms based in countries with minimal employment and labour laws, their main legal issues are around employee rights, working conditions and wages.
Who said it
Lee Munson
Mentioned in
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Fan culture/fandom
A fandom is a subculture composed of fans characterized by a feeling of empathy and camaraderie with others who share a common interest. Fans typically are interested in even minor details of the objects of their fandom and spend a significant portion of their time and energy involved with their interest, often as a part of a social network with particular practices, differentiating fandom-affiliated people from those with only a casual interest. [Wiki]
The history of the word “fandom” starts with a very old word — “fanatic.” “Fanatic” arose out of a Latin word, “fānāticus,” which, in turn, came from the word “fanum,” meaning “temple” or “shrine". In the late 19th-century, the word "fan" started to be used to describe an enthousiast of a certain sports team.
Mentioned in: "On productivity and game fandom" by Hanna Wirman
“Textual Poachers: Television Fan & Participatory Culture” by Henry Jenkins
In context: Members of a fandom associate with one another and build a community around their fan interest (e.g.: celebrities, hobbies, genres, fashion, ...). A fan culture often includes fan activities such as conventions, writing fan fictions, participating in fan online forums and discussions, purchasing merchandise and collector items, etc. Some of the largest fandoms are the Harry Potter fandom, Anime fandom and the BTS army (BTS is a K-Pop group).
In a sentence: A fandom is a subgroup of fans that share a common interest.