A good read on the uncomfortable benefits of buying followers

A good read on the uncomfortable benefits of buying followers:

Even more interesting, at least to me, was what my fake followers did for me. My Klout score almost instantly shot up. I was not impressed by that until I realized that Microsoft’s search engine, Bing, collaborates with Klout, so that a higher Klout score put me higher on Bing’s search results.

The followers thing is always a strange consideration — I have something like 4k+ now but that doesn’t mean these people are all still active, wildly engaged with what I do or anything else of value. And yet, because they appeared organically over the years, there’s a sense they mean something more than if they were bought and fake.

I think this chap got the right idea — find an excuse for an “experiment” that let’s you have your (integrity) cake and eat it.