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thepastisalreadywritten · 1 month

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(CNN) — Jack Latham was on a mission to photograph farms in Vietnam — not the country’s sprawling plantations or rice terraces but its “click farms.”

Last year, the British photographer spent a month in the capital Hanoi documenting some of the shadowy enterprises that help clients artificially boost online traffic and social media engagement in the hope of manipulating algorithms and user perceptions.

The resulting images, which feature in his new book “Beggar’s Honey,” provide rare insight into the workshops that hire low-paid workers to cultivate likes, comments and shares for businesses and individuals globally.

“When most people are on social media, they want nothing but attention — they’re begging for it,” Latham said in a phone interview, explaining his book’s title.

“With social media, our attention is a product for advertisers and marketers.”

In the 2000s, the growing popularity of social media sites — including Facebook and Twitter, now called X — created a new market for well-curated digital profiles, with companies and brands vying to maximize visibility and influence.

Though it is unclear when click farms began proliferating, tech experts warned about “virtual gang masters” operating them from low-income countries as early as 2007.

In the following decades, click farms exploded in number — particularly in Asia, where they can be found across India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, the Philippines, and beyond.

Regulations have often failed to keep pace: While some countries, like China, have attempted to crack down on operations (the China Advertising Association banned the use of click farms for commercial gain in 2020), they continue to flourish around the continent, especially in places where low labor and electricity costs make it affordable to power hundreds of devices simultaneously.

‘Like Silicon Valley startups’

Latham’s project took him to five click farms in Vietnam.

(The click farmers he hoped to photograph in Hong Kong “got cold feet,” he said, and pandemic-related travel restrictions dashed his plans to document the practice in mainland China).

On the outskirts of Hanoi, Latham visited workshops operating from residential properties and hotels.

Some had a traditional setup with hundreds of manually operated phones, while others used a newer, compact method called “box farming” — a phrase used by the click farmers Latham visited — where several phones, without screens and batteries, are wired together and linked to a computer interface.

Latham said one of the click farms he visited was a family-run business, though the others appeared more like a tech companies.

Most workers were in their 20s and 30s, he added.

“They all looked like Silicon Valley startups,” he said. “There was a tremendous amount of hardware … whole walls of phones.”

Some of Latham’s photos depict — albeit anonymously — workers tasked with harvesting clicks.

In one image, a man is seen stationed amid a sea of gadgets in what appears to be a lonely and monotonous task.

“It only takes one person to control large amounts of phones,” Latham said. “One person can very quickly (do the work of) 10,000. It’s both solitary and crowded.”

At the farms Lathan visited, individuals were usually in charge of a particular social media platforms.

For instance, one “farmer” would be responsible for mass posting and commenting on Facebook accounts, or setting up YouTube platforms where they post and watch videos on loop.

The photographer added that TikTok is now the most popular platform at the click farms he visited.

The click farmers Latham spoke to mostly advertised their services online for less than one cent per click, view or interaction.

And despite the fraudulent nature of their tasks, they seemed to treat it like just another job, the photographer said.

‘There was an understanding they were just providing a service,” he added. “There wasn’t a shadiness. What they’re offering is shortcuts.”

Deceptive perception

Across its 134 pages, “Beggar’s Honey” includes a collection of abstract photographs — some seductive, others contemplative — depicting videos that appeared on Latham’s TikTok feed.

He included them in the book to represent the kind of content he saw being boosted by click farms.

But many of his photos focus on the hardware used to manipulate social media —webs of wires, phones and computers.

“A lot of my work is about conspiracies,” Latham said. ” Trying to ‘document the machines used to spread disinformation’ is the tagline of the project. The bigger picture is often the thing we don’t see.”

Click farms around the world are also used to amplify political messages and spread disinformation during elections.

In 2016, Cambodia’s then-prime minister Hun Sen was accused of buying Facebook friends and likes, which according to the BBC he denied, while shadowy operations in North Macedonia were found to have spread pro-Donald Trump posts and articles during that year’s US presidential election.

While researching, Latham said he found that algorithms — a topic of his previous book, “Latent Bloom” — often recommended videos that he said got increasingly “extreme” with each click.

“If you only digest a diet of that, it’s a matter of time you become diabetically conspiratorial,” he said.

“The spreading of disinformation is the worst thing. It happens in your pocket, not newspapers, and it’s terrifying that it’s tailored to your kind of neurosis.”

Hoping to raise awareness of the phenomenon and its dangers, Latham is planning to exhibit his own home version of a click farm — a small box with several phones attached to a computer interface — at the 2024 Images Vevey Festival in Switzerland.

He bought the gadget in Vietnam for the equivalent of about $1,000 and has occasionally experimented with it on his social media accounts.

On Instagram, Latham’s photos usually attract anywhere from a few dozen to couple hundred likes.

But when he deployed his personal click farm to announce his latest book, the post generated more than 6,600 likes.

The photographer wants people to realize that there’s more to what they see on social media — and that metrics aren’t a measurement of authenticity.

“When people are better equipped with knowledge of how things work, they can make more informed decisions,” he said.

“Beggar’s Honey,” co-published by Here Press and Images Vevey, is available now.

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purer0t · 17 days

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#skitty speaks #mass post #mood #divine #pink flamingos

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bees-design-blog · 10 months

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Some simple wof designs

#Mass post #wof #wings of fire #darkstalker #kinkajou #qibli #winter #hope #foeslayer #peril #peacemaker #secret keeper #arctic #Wings of fire designs #wings of fire fanart

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drumbumak · 3 months

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came to post my art, what is up denny’s!!!!

stuff I’ve done this year so far

#artwork #hyperdimension neptunia #touhou #original art #mass post #it won’t all be like this i promise #yeehaw

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neptoons1998 · 9 months

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expect a lot of fics tomorrow

#fanfiction #ao3 #writing #shuri x riri #attuma x okoye #prowlerbyte #I'm writing rn and posting all tomorrow #mass post

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thelittleredwitch · 2 months

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I felt some kind of quiet cataclysm roaring beneath the surface, through tired eyes and a smile that masked a million emotions was this beautiful, childlike wonder waiting to be nurtured and accepted just enough to show itself.

I could feel a soul in despair asking for company, requesting to be loved, truly. With a silent plea for patience. Seeking kindness for a heart that was tired of being betrayed. Hands tired, tired of feeling a frigid lover feel a flame for another , ears tired of hearing overused excuses, a person's esteem battered with waves of rejection formed in shallow waters, they remain wondering if not you then who? Ultimately, no one.

With words of resignation, seated in despair facing an inevitable truth felt so many times before it’s become a sad song stuck on repeat, accepting it as one may the final pages of a novel.

“Don’t worry, I’m use to it”. A person tired of feeling alone, a man tired of wearing a mask to fit in and cutting himself down because no one stacked up. But stuck on the sidelines with the assumption that he wasn’t good enough to play in any games.

A. MacAllister

#my art #original content #love #prose #spilled poetry #art #fluff #mass post #original #writerscommunity #writers on tumblr

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imsociallyanxiousgetoverit · 1 year

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I dont know

horsey :D

fuck

build

heh heh I’m in danger

#mass post #qhc link crying #totk #totk spoilers

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jazzythejazzles · 5 months

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Remaking this stupid ass bio so lets do this <3 I'm Jazzy or Whateves Soup my bestie boo calls me! I am an adult! I am gay, trans, poly, and hypersexual! I write, draw, and voice act. I go by He/They/Lemur/Lemurself. I have autism, ADHD, OSDD/DID <3 NSFW ASKS ARE ALLOWED? JUST DONT OVER DO IT PLZ. I use tonetags! SOUP IF YOU ARE READING THIS I LOVE YOU/p/gen Thats all for now! ALTERS Raph 🎀(He/She), Snickers 🍫(He/Him), Twizzler 🥽(He/It), Velvette 🤳(She/Her), Charlie 🏳‍🌈(Any), Melody 🐾(She/It). F!Mikey 🎇(They/Them) RP BLOG: @blossoms-hellish-wonderland

#mod jazzy #mass post #pinned intro #please read before interacting

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the-smartest-pig-alive · 9 months

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Been forgetting to post here in a while, so here is some stuff I made since my last post.

(OMG, the tag list is gonna be long...; Also CatDog is in the tags because the third from last image is a reference to CatDog)

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oozeandgoo-art · 11 months

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#katjaana #glod #afastr #ioni #advarik #doodle #lasuurikivi #traditional media #mass post #rukaan #deer #background

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sinnamonrollcat · 2 months

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My fav jjk duo moment

#my lil (mass murderer) meow meow #our supportive queen shoko #friendship goals #jjk #呪術廻戦 #jjk memes #jjk shitpost #jujutsu kaisen #jujutsu kaisen memes #suguru geto #geto suguru #shoko ieiri #my posts #my memes #sinnaspeaks #mood

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elizaisdunn · 6 months

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how I imagine Grian telling the gang it’s time for a new season

#eliza draws #life series #secret life #double life #limited life #last life #third life #grian #meme format #life series cast #all of them #this is not indicative of how I imagine everyone heights I was just putting people where they would fit lol #originally posted to my private twitter but the more I look at it the funnier I think it is #so i’m sharing it with the masses #I hope u like it :)

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cyanomys · 10 months

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#polls #polls and research #pointless poll #united states #midwest #hell #location #moving #america #look im sorry if youre insulted by me grouping some states but there are 12 Midwestern states and only 10 options allowed #i just took a trip across the country and my limited perspective is that Ohio is Not So Bad #i grew up in Missouri 🫠#why yes i am blazing this post #i enjoy whoring my ideas to the masses to satisfy my curiosity

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listen-to-the-inner-walrus · 10 months

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so theres a lot of posts going round about the titanic wreck and the missing submarines; all of them that ive seen have made very good points about how shoddy the submersible seemed to be and how the company decided to wait eight hours before reporting it, and how this is a play stupid games, win stupid prizes for the ultra-wealthy who paid like 250grand a ticket for this thing.

but what i havent seen any posts about is how the titanic wreck is a gravesite and this tourism is disturbing the graves of over 1500 people.

sometimes its kinda hard to remember that those on the titanic were real people; it was over a century ago, the story has been romanticised in so many ways (like the movie), theres conspiracies theories galore that cloud everything with misinformation, but at the end of the day, those who died were real people.

do you want their names? heres a list of them; its a long read. and for fun, heres another site where you can see photos of the children and babies who died aboard.

their bodies are long gone and their lives long forgotten. all we have to remember them and honour them is the wreck itself. its all we have of them and it is their gravesite. its their tombstone.

caitlin doughty/ask a morticians video on the great lakes discusses the topic well, and why we should leave these shipwrecks alone because again, they are the gravesites of all the souls who died aboard those ships. we rarely have bodies to recover so we really are left just with the wreck.

and what really upsets me about titanic tourism is how the majority of those who died that night were not the ultra-wealthy rich folks you might picture when you think of ocean liners.

61% of the first class passengers survived

42% of the second class passengers survived

24% of the third class passengers survived

24% of the crew survived **

the majority of those who died that night were regular folk; not to be cliche, but they were just like us. titanics wreck is not only a gravesite for over 1500 people, its also a majority working class gravesite.

and look at us now. look at what were doing. the ultra-wealthy can pay the equivalent of peanuts to them to disturb a mass gravesite of the exact kind of people they exploit today to hold onto all their wealth.

its easy to point and laugh at these dumb idiots in their playstation controller submarine, seemingly held together with super glue and duct tape, but its also important to remember that what they were doing was simply disturbing a gravesite for fun. though the company does research, these guys werent down there to conduct research, they were there so they could brag about it to their friends. its like “climbing mount everest” while your sherpa does all the work.

if you cant tell, i have a lot of feelings about this. shipwrecks and ocean liners are one of my special interests and im currently building a (beginner’s) model of the titanic, for fucks sake. but i would never go down to see that wreck because its a fucking gravesite and we should not be disturbing their final resting place.