Silicon Valley’s (the place, not the show) not-so dirty little secret got its moment under the Hollywood spotlight on this past Sunday’s penultimate episode of Silicon Valley’s (the show, not the place) third season.
Silicon Valley, created by Mike Judge, is perhaps the most honest portrayal of what work and life is like in California’s digital gold mining community. And if the antics of Richard and team’s Pied Piper start-up company seem sometimes a little far fetched, the final scene of this episode, titled “Daily Active Users,” represents an all too honest peak behind the curtain. Audiences are finally brought face to face with human beings in a third world country (think Bangladesh or India) who wake up each day and go to work in a large office filled with dozens if not hundreds of others who do nothing all day but click on ads, download apps, log into sites, and various other tasks that real everyday users of the internet engage in purposefully.
Here is that final scene…
However, these people do it simply to get paid on average, the equivalent of $1 a day. Their “work” can be worth millions to their employers and sometimes billions to the tech companies of Silicon Valley like Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, What’s App, etc.. Really, any company that bases its value to investors and potential buy-out suiters on a high DAU count. That’s Daily Active Users to us laymen. In contrast, a company like Uber may not utilize these click farms because they are providing an actual real world service – connecting people with cars and nowhere to be, to people with no cars and somewhere to be. So it’s kind of hard to fake actual people getting rides in actual cars. Although I do admit to a possible future where people, or AI robots, could be paid to book Uber rides around town just to boost their DAU count.
Facebook, for instance, now claims that it has a . That’s one billion people everyday, logging into Facebook and engaging. How many of them are actually using it for its intended purpose of connecting with friends and family, sharing stories, photos and life events? Well considering that over 1 billion of Facebook’s total 1.59 billion user accounts exist outside of Europe and North America, I imagine it is fair to say that a plethora of those accounts are are bogus. Read this account published by Business Insider three years ago which details some of the fakery behind all those likes, views, and followers that social media giants rely on for their billion dollar evaluations. Emphasis mine.
Turned out I made the right choice. Got to where I needed to throughout my visit, for less total cost than a rental or the same number of cab rides, and didn’t have to worry about parking. Bonus: I felt tantalizingly hip, in a Silicon Valley-nerd way. (Which is a step or two below Hollywood-hip, but two steps above DC hip.)