[akira2501]

It reminds me of payola.

Radio stations would get paid to make songs that weren't popular seem more popular than they were so people would blindly buy them. It's the same old snake oil just taken to mass media.

Since both behaviors revolve around profit, you can apply the same means to mediate them. Further, the open plan "user generated content" model has been dying for a while now, the wills of some well moneyed monopolies keep it alive. We will iterate to something much better anyways. Perhaps this is just a force that drives it.