Speaker: constantdull
Using follower bombing as art performances, the artists Constant Dullaart continues the research into attention and identity as a commodity on social networks, and has recently created a large sum of custom created artificial Facebook identities.
Many websites offer an option to login in with Facebook credentials due to the strict controle of the service on the reliability and verification of the social medium. In a time where the open borders in Europe are under pressure, and Syrian identities are sold to people that long for a better future, virtual identity systems, and their reliability become a topical analogy.
Due to the large financial incentive through advertisement revenue, there is a large industry creating Facebook accounts that can be used for commercial purposes only, and controlled en masse by dedicated software.
With a press of a button hundreds of artificial accounts can like a certain Facebook post, group, political party, celebrity, brand or artist. Influencing advertisement revenue and cost, elections, or feigning consumer interest.
These profiles are not representative of actual human entities, and are only created to pass for people through Facebook’s detection algorithms. Somewhat similar to how a social registration number creates a physical legal identity.
With generated names and interests, with downloaded images, these accounts have verified email addresses, and the most valuable profiles are Phone Verified Accounts, so called PVAs.
PVAs generated with United States based phone numbers are most valuable since they are checked less by Facebook, than profiles verified with Pakistani, Bangladeshi or Filipino for example.
The last countries playing a big part in the artificial virtual identity industry.
Although this industry has been active for many years, commodifying our idea’s of what shapes an online identity, many journalists, political parties, institutions, and consumers still believe that t
