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Comment by mike_d | Hacker News Reader

MySpace: The parent company (eUniverse) was a prolific spammer and blasted fake invites to people who had signed up for their dating sites.

Reddit: As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, they created tons of fake accounts to show a community.

TikTok: Ironically, they launched the platform by having employees spam other platforms with branded videos.

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LinkedIn: got access to your email contacts list, and spammed everyone in it, multiple times. (This is the reason I do not use LinkedIn, is I do not support a company that is founded on sending out spam).

Yup, they got sued for it too: https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/linkedin-class-action-email...

I will never ever create a LinkedIn account, the hard sell techniques, spam to my inbox and aggressiveness is so off-putting that I would rather eat my own barf. This whole company and its power users reeks to me from outside like a scene from Glengarry Glen Ross: a bunch of hustlers trying to fake-it-till-they-make-it, appear super-important and trump up their bogus businessperson profiles and pretend connections.

you not missing anything. The LI I enjoyed some 5-8 years ago is nothing like LI today. I got literally blocked twice because someone was spreading misinformation re vaccines, and when I point it out that LI is not even a place for this, I got reported by so many anti vax that my account got automatically suspended.

Nathan Blecharczyk, co founder of AirBNB, and once on FBI 100 wanted as a top spammer on US soil [1], also spin off AirBNB by posting unrealistically (fake) cheap rentals of beautiful apartments in places where normal rent should be 10x more. Once people reply to these offers he auto-responded that the unit has been rented, but they should be looking for another unit on AirBNB website. Super clever, super immoral, illegal?

[1] https://venturebeat.com/2011/10/27/airbnb-spam-allegations/

Spam, the mother of all growth hacking.

It makes me laugh thinking about my time as a growth hacker. Reading these style of posts and thinking that there's going to be some hidden gem of dam buster that will unleash all leads.

Nope just spam. Spam will get you the results you need.

> Reddit: As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, they created tons of fake accounts to show a community.

My personal conspiracy theory right now is that they're behind 90% of awards on posts. It costs them nothing and normalises the behaviour.

Many people buy Reddit Premium to get rid of ads. Each month also grants you 700 coins, which is enough to award a gold and two silvers. Receiving a gold gives you enough coins to give a silver (I think, I don't remember the exact ratio). That is where a ton of awards come from.

Employees do get free gold to hand out, but the ratio isn't as high as you'd think.

I fully admit it's a baseless conspiracy theory :) Perhaps it happened in the early days to get traction if not now, or perhaps not, but anyway thanks for the information.

I've pretty much only ever seen TikToks on YouTube!

Meme compilations, best TikToks and so on...

The kids watch them, but dont use TikTok!

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