Clout Chaser
I bought my first batch of fake followers in 2012.
Around that time, I decided to become a software engineer.
Over the past ten years, my code, methodologies, and business ventures have been responsible for hundreds of millions of illicit automated engagements on Instagram.
I was motivated by currency, curiosity, and clout, and it was easy to justify my duel with the unchecked power of social media platforms. Given all the hours stolen from my generation, why not snatch something back?
I saw how the quirky apps of my adolescence had become inescapably addictive, how Big Tech made a mockery of relationship building, and how algorithms, including algorithms I later developed, rewarded problematic and antisocial behavior. I received declined payment alerts indicating that customers had depleted their bank accounts while chasing popularity on Instagram.
After I started writing this book, a social media startup offered me an opportunity to lead an engineering team that built (controversial) attention-grabbing recommendation and engagement algorithms. I accepted; I was successful. From my control panel, my influence on the platform’s users was godlike. I was stealing their time and getting paid for it.
This book is not a response to the Netflix docudrama The Social Dilemma loosely based on the book, Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe, which was itself a narrative-driven amalgamation of viewpoints contained in a half-dozen tech-meets-sociology books with irritably similar titles.
This is not a research project, long-winded whistle-blow, hit piece, or self-aggrandizing chronicle of my life.
Framed: A Villain’s Perspective on Social Media is a collection of shards and shreds and conspiratorial diatribes penned by a fellow who grew up with the internet, became an adept programmer, and mastered the realm of social media while never being employed by Big Tech.
Four pillars comprise the impetus of this book:
1. Being born in the 1990s, growing up with the internet, and avidly using social media—from Myspace in 2006 to TikTok in the 2020s.
2. Possessing a computer science degree and a grasp of advanced programming concepts, enabling me to analyze social media on a different plane.
3. Having profited from veritable “bad guy” activities on Instagram and other social media platforms.
4. Having led the development of algorithmic recommendation systems, push notification infrastructure, and personalized social feeds at a mobile app startup.
These experiences, combined with an enthusiasm for writing, enough money to finance and create this book free from outside influences, and a modicum of hope that this effort could be a positive force for change, have led this eccentric recluse on an unlikely journey.
This journey has been a confluence of opportunity and ambition, demand and demarcation, rules and rulers and rulings. I believe I have a duty to preserve my journey. Rigor must be applied even when outcomes may be inconvenient. Questions must be asked, and even the most reckless opinions must be shared despite the risk of ostracization.
I meandered into social media automation because I was motivated by vanity and greed. I made money and brushed shoulders with men and women who earned substantially more. This arena of social media marketing (abbreviated as SMM) turned out to be a shadowy realm of value-added services profitable beyond my wildest imagination. This book covers SMM better than any other.
Much content about social media is biased and misleading—paid placements, mediocre books, recycled content, hidden affiliate links, poor punditry, wonky agendas, and perpetual clickbait point to the concealment of sad truths. Making sense of the deluge of spurious information requires technical adroitness, obsessive immersion, and sociological sensibility. There are few journalists bravely tackling these issues.
The villains and those generating massive revenue from services built on top of social media platforms have no incentive to talk. One scoundrel responded to an interview request with, “I'm good bro, hope the launch goes well.”
Social networks, now synonymous with publicly traded companies, must tread lightly. Shareholders get finicky when faced with publicity about the social media underworld or the societal decay caused by their products. At the same time regulators and authorities are becoming daring. Government action, bot takeovers, and bombshell articles from the New York Times cause users to bounce to other apps. Those precious activity metrics, regularly reported to investors, must be upheld at all costs.
I’ve been the puppeteer as well as the puppet. Unhealthy social media use has weakened the fabric of society. People are depressed, distracted, and anti-social. Placing a smartphone in the hands of a child redefines childhood. The middling creatives among us simply transcribe compelling captions and apply neat filters to their photos.
Framed was written for a broad audience. Although elements of my personal experience are present throughout, there is not a cohesive, linear story. For this reason, I’ve split this document into two themes:
1. Tragicomedy: my views on the amusing, dreadful world of social media.
2. Instagram’s emergence and platform misbehavior: an authoritative account of villainy.
Even if the reader acquires a bootleg copy of this book, perhaps with missing material or unauthorized edits, it’s payment enough to flip through the pages and consider the perspectives therein. Today’s world is filled with unprecedented freedom and opportunity ushered in by the Information Age. Reader, regardless of how or when you came across this book, I hope you share the same optimism that technology can improve society.
I also hope that you’ll follow me back.
