Likes measure engagement, not goodwill, in the attention economy

Evidence

Jenner’s excessive display of waste in the face of a burning world produced a huge number of likes alongside any controversy. As anyone who uses social media knows, “likes” are hardly an accurate account of goodwill. They are a representation of any minimal engagement with a public person, and engagement is the lifeblood of social media attention. — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 375

Categorization

• XREF: Defines the commodity of online attention: engagement itself, not affection. Feeds the labor theory of value analysis. — connects to: Attention cannot function as currency without homogenizing measurement — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 163; Attention functions as currency in prestige-differentiated social groups — Michael H. Goldhaber, The Attention Economy and the Net, 13