alt Hacker News> telling people to stream music, even though no one's listening to it, for the sole purpose of getting streaming minutes
How is that fundamentally different from netflix or youtube auto-playing something after a video finishes, knowing that a large percentage of the people who started the first video won't be present or attentive to the second, in order to artificially inflate views for the content they're promoting.
1. the auto-play does eventually stop, presumably because they need to maintain some semblance of legitimacy to advertisers
2. caveat emptor. how youtube works and how ads are played is hardly secret information, so accusations that google is deceiving advertisers (not just providing a subpar product) is hard to make.
3. people have tried suing companies for this, but they were over securities fraud rather than deceiving ad buyers. No idea how successful they were though. it's worth noting that suing for securities fraud is easier because unlike with advertising, you have to declare risk factors, hence why every company's prospectus lists all potential list factors under the sun.