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@Mer__edith Well, if we’re lucky, we’ll find out which of us is right. ;)

But I think the rationale of “engagement pumping via fake content”, while icky (and obviously a betrayal of Meta’s alleged mission of “connecting people”), is pretty coherent and consistent with increasing ad revenue.

Whereas “fake traffic” is basically a scam on advertisers and, importantly, advertisers ultimately do see their own conversion rates from paid traffic—so they can catch on very quickly if Meta starts sending a lot of traffic which doesn’t convert. So the “fake traffic” approach strikes me as something that would cause the business to unravel in very short order.