The platformization of the follower factory: Para-platforms, automation, and labor in the market for social media engagements

This article examines the emerging illicit, sprawling yet obfuscated global market for artificial social media engagements, which inflates follower counts and engagement metrics on social media profiles and posts. The organization of this market has previously been characterized using industrial metaphors such as “click farms,” “follower factories,” and “digital sweatshops” primarily based in the Global South. Using a mixed-methods approach that integrates ethnography with digital methods, this research delineates the platformization of the follower factory, highlighting a shift toward automation rather than manual interaction. This has facilitated the rapid expansion of a multi-sided market, enabling resellers to scale up and consequently necessitating a more complex labor organization that includes marketing and customer service, which have shaped cottage industries across the Global South. This market capitalizes on social media platform economies, using the existing infrastructure and user bases to operate. In other words, the engagement market has become centered on what we term a para-platform ecosystem, which, while operating alongside, remains reliant on social media platform infrastructure. By examining and conceptualizing platformization and platform ecosystems “from below,” as well as the conflictual asymmetry yet productive relationship between the para-platform ecosystem and social media platforms, this article provides an unprecedented description of the engagement market while challenging and expanding the boundaries of platform theory.