The pitch is seductive. For a struggling small business owner in Manila, a boost of 1,000 likes on a new product post might trigger the real algorithm to finally take notice. For a teenager in Ohio, buying 200 friends might be the shortcut to shedding the "loner" label.

Facebook’s machine learning is frighteningly good at detecting "engagement anomolies." When a post from a sleepy bakery in Vermont suddenly receives 800 likes from accounts in Bangladesh, Brazil, and Bulgaria within 90 seconds, the red flags fly.

You aren't a bot. You are a human bot —renting out your digital thumb for fractions of a penny.

In the vast, endless blue of a Facebook feed, popularity is currency. A heart react here, a like there—these tiny dopamine hits dictate what we see, how we feel, and increasingly, how much money a business makes.