False economy What’s in it for me? Understand what makes the

Argument 4: Social media contributes to the 
mass production of misinformation.
Online, as in life, our choices are often guided by 
others. Need a good doctor? You’ll probably 
conduct a Google search and compare various 
reviews. Trying to find a funny video to watch? 
You’ll probably select one with millions of views.
But here’s the thing. That doctor popped up high 
in your search results, and that video has tons of 
views, for the same reason: fake people.
By “fake” we don’t mean “superficial.” We mean 
literally fake. Fake people are ubiquitous online, 
and while their accounts might look real at first 
glance, they’re in fact bots controlled by fake-
people factories – companies that sell fake 
followers for profit.
For instance, in early 2018, an article in the New 
York Times reported that the standard price for 
25,000 fake followers on Twitter was $225.
Without fake people, websites like Ashley 
Madison, where you can supposedly meet 
adulterous men and women and arrange an 
affair, probably wouldn’t exist at all. It’s been 
alleged that the site used fake women to get 
men to purchase higher-priced accounts.
This is where component F – Fake mobs and 
Faker society – comes in, because fakeness 
isn’t only an issue for people who use BUMMER 
services; it warps the truth elsewhere, too.
For instance, BUMMER often breeds the wildest 
conspiracy theories. This happens because 
disseminating paranoia and crackpot ideas is an 

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excellent way to get attention, and attention is 
what BUMMER platforms are all about.
Conspiracy theories are spread in many ways, 
including fake stories, clickbait and memes. And, 
in the echo chambers of BUMMER, these 
stories, links and memes are picked up by the 
bots behind the fake accounts and amplified to a 
deafening degree.
Just consider immunization. Vaccines have 
saved countless lives; without them, we’d still be 
dying of diseases that, today, seem like the 
phantoms of a bygone age. But despite the 
incalculable good that vaccines represent, some 
parents refuse to vaccinate their children.
The paranoia-mongering of BUMMER – the fake 
articles and memes and clickbait – has 
convinced them that vaccines are evil and 
harmful, that they cause autism and any number 
of other unsubstantiated claims.
This is frightening. Not only are more children at 
risk of dying from diseases that we should no 
longer have to worry about, but more intelligent 
people are basing their opinions on information 
spread by individuals that don’t exist.