a reply to:
Athetos
A few different angles to this phenomenon, that perhaps someone will find the right name for ?
When looking-up a business on Google-Maps : a large part of the "Google-reviews" are fake.
Either AI, or paid scumbags.
Some have fake business locations.
Maybe you saw it in the news a few years ago : a company in Toronto. hired a bunch of jobber-repairmen, all around the country, then posted fake
business locations, and fake reviews.
So you pay top price for a late-night emergency plumber, but the guy shows-up with a crappy old pick-up, wearing flip-flops, with a wrench and a
screwdriver in his back-pocket. (Jobber.)
Here's another example : CBC radio-2 weekly top 20.
They keep encouraging listeners to vote for their favorite songs, but their voice is only a part of the equation.
A couple of weeks ago, they announced the next song was the one that received the most votes : " coming-in in seventh place, on your top-20, the song
that received the most votes ... "
Sometimes they mention, that they use multiple criteria, such as online-votes, US chart-success, and "other factors" ...
But they still call it "your top 20."
Sort of like "here's your news," is not the news that you want, but what they choose to push on you.