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Inside a click farm – exposé on how they work in plain sight, in Hong Kong and Vietnam
- Photographer sees inside a click farm, where computers control banks of phones that manipulate how popular online content appears
Reading Time:4 minutes
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In April 2023, British photographer Jack Latham waited on a Hong Kong street for a person he knew only as M.
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The two men had exchanged messages on WhatsApp and Telegram for nearly a year and Latham had flown out from London hoping M would lead him into the shadowy world of click farms in the city.
Despite being unaware of their existence, we feel the effects of click farms every day, from the products we buy to the political ideas we support, says Latham.
“A click farm is an organisation whose sole purpose is to manipulate the analytics of social media or online content,” he says.
“They do this through liking people’s accounts or posts, increasing views on YouTube videos, leaving positive comments or reviews […] All to make something look artificially more popular than it is, in the hopes of changing the public’s opinion about something.
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