"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."
I love that quote and it's attribution a 19th century British prime minister (1) illustrates how long this "trend" has been around.
So when the author of the article states
"Nobody can say exactly when the trend first started, but in 2014 we saw the first major outbreaks of bogus data distributed by private companies just so it would go viral online"
Sure, statistics in marketing has been around for hundreds of years. I think his key point was alluded to with "just so it would go viral online" as being the new and growing theme.
The trick is getting the public at large to spread the message, and the goal not being the message itself but rather a higher pagerank and traffic. Before, the statistic itself had to be meaningful, i.e. "users of our weight loss supplement lost 43 pounds in the first month". Now, the statistic just has to be "shocking" but not actually sell anything.
I love that quote and it's attribution a 19th century British prime minister (1) illustrates how long this "trend" has been around.
So when the author of the article states
"Nobody can say exactly when the trend first started, but in 2014 we saw the first major outbreaks of bogus data distributed by private companies just so it would go viral online"
I think that's a bit hyperbolic.
Old hat, fun to write about though.