Facebook "Like" System Devalued By Fake Users

New submitter k(wi)r(kipedia) writes "A BBC investigation has found evidence of fake users skewing the results of Facebook's 'Like' recommendation system. The BBC set up a Facebook page for a fake business called VirtualBagel and invited users to 'like' it. The page reportedly attracted 'over 1,600 likes' within twenty-four hours. The test appeared to confirm the claims of a social media marketing consultant who contacted the BBC after he noticed a disparity in the distribution of users 'liking' the products of his clients. 'While they had been targeting Facebook users around the world, all their "likes" appeared to be coming from countries such as the Philippines and Egypt.'"

Comments

I like this!

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, and hi from the Philippines! :) We have a very liking culture over here.

Re:In essence people Egypt like stuff they know

[MichaelSmith]

People in Egypt and the Philippines are being paid to click on links. By doing that the client "VirtualBagel" pays more for their advertising service (a facebook page).

Re:In essence people Egypt like stuff they know

[Quick Reply]

Probably bots trying to establish a presence and thereby appearing to be a legitimate account when the try to friend people who might accept them even if they don't know them. Once in a friends list they can use it for viral marketing and/or theft of personal data.

The scam is simple

[Anonymous Coward]

Facebook lets them send messages to others telling them they 'like' something. So they 'like' it, then get to send the spam message advertising their viagra/rolex/whatever they're trying to sell.

Simple really. If 98% of email is spam, them likely 98% of likes are spam too.

"Earlier this year Facebook revealed that about 5-6% of its 901 million users might be fake - representing up to 54 million profiles."

If 5% of their users are fakes, that's 45 million, if each likes 5000, thats 200 billion fake likes. The bigger question is why do advertisers imagine that Facebook pages are somehow more traffic'd than Internet pages, when every facebook user is an internet user, but not every internet user is a facebook user.

It's like putting adverts in second life, remember that?

Re:The scam is simple

[dredwerker]

Facebook lets them send messages to others telling them they 'like' something. So they 'like' it, then get to send the spam message advertising their viagra/rolex/whatever they're trying to sell.

Simple really. If 98% of email is spam, them likely 98% of likes are spam too.

"Earlier this year Facebook revealed that about 5-6% of its 901 million users might be fake - representing up to 54 million profiles."

If 5% of their users are fakes, that's 45 million, if each likes 5000, thats 200 billion fake likes. The bigger question is why do advertisers imagine that Facebook pages are somehow more traffic'd than Internet pages, when every facebook user is an internet user, but not every internet user is a facebook user.

It's like putting adverts in second life, remember that?

Thanks for the explanation because that was definitely not in the BBC article.

Re:The scam is simple

[ohnocitizen]

The bigger question is why do advertisers imagine that Facebook pages are somehow more traffic'd than Internet pages, when every facebook user is an internet user, but not every internet user is a facebook user.

They don't. They imagine Facebook users will be easier to track, market to, and (most importantly) market through. Every Facebook user is a potential advertising channel.

Re:The scam is simple

[newcastlejon]

Pity, they've forgotten the 'inform' and 'educate' parts...and as for 'enrich', oh yes, I'm so fucking 'enriched' by Eastenders..

Yes, it's a shame that the BBC's only program is Eastenders.

I'm sorry to say that I fund the abomination that is the BBC through my (compulsory) license fee...

It's not compulsory and it doesn't just fund the BBC. I stopped paying it years ago* and I'm quite happy using on-demand services, which don't require one to pay the licence fee.

...it always amuses me when I hear foreigners go on about how good the BBC news service is, and how unbiased it is etc. bloody etc.

Try listening to the World Service, or even the domestic news, and then tell us all about the bias in the BBC because aside from pandering to the Royal Family and near-continuous promotion of the Olympics I've never noticed any. Alternatively you could take some small measure of pride in the fact that your country is home to one of the most respected broadcasters in the world.

*Not because of the quality of the programming; I stopped paying it because I could get all I wanted from iPlayer (despite the admittedly poor selection).

Re:The scam is simple

[SuricouRaven]

The BBC does have a bit of a political correctness bias. You'll not often catch them saying anything that could be even remotely seen as anti-any-minority. For example, I was recently watching 'How to get a a life' episode on discrimination, and one case study was a Sikh who was unable to spectate at a cricket game because the venue had a strict policy forbidding the carrying of weapons, and as a strict Sikh he felt obliged by his religion to carry around a rather large knife. At no point in the program was it suggested that the venue might have had good reason to forbid people carrying knives at a sporting event, or was the debate raised about the right of religious freedom vs the wider public interest. It was just portrayed as a case of those ignorant british trampling upon the cultural rights of another oppress minority.

That aside though, their bias is *nothing* compared to any of the more commercial producers. The bias of the BBC pales into nothing beside them. And they do produce some excellent documentory programs, which again look even better when compared to the more commercial offerings which seem always to be dumbed-down to widen their appeal.

Scary thought

[Anonymous Coward]

So if I understand this correctly, they're saying that some of the people on Facebook are real?

Re:Scary thought

[siddesu]

No, they only say it is possible.

What to gain?

[Lord Lode]

What do fake users gain by Like-ing a fake business page?

Isn't it more effective for fake users to like something that at least gives them some money in some way? I mean, spam lives from money, right?

Re:What to gain?

[Zaiff Urgulbunger]

What do fake users gain by Like-ing a fake business page?

As I understand it, once they've "liked" the page, they can then post spam messages on that page.

The irony of course being that this effort is presumably worth-while to the spammers, and thus seems to confirm the argument that some advertising companies are making, that they get better results by just focusing on their own FB page and building a community and not bothering with FB advertising.

And yet, nothing of value was lost.

[EnsilZah]

For it to have been devalued you'd have to assume it had any value in the first place.

Re:In essence people Egypt like stuff they know

[ozmanjusri]

Plese elaborate - why? Who's spamming whom again?

Everybody and everybody, especially here.

Reddit, Slashdot, and Digg are three of several resources for user-submitted news. Take a browse through a few and get familiar with the platform. In our next blog post, we’ll discuss using these free tools for spreading brand awareness and promoting dialogue about your business.

There are marketing opportunities to harness in social news websites.

http://www.kelownawebdesigns.com/social-media/reddit-slashdot-digg-social-news-websites/

http://www.evancarmichael.com/SEO/1455/Social-Media-The-Instant-Brand-Killer.html

http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/social-media-marketing-allinone-for-dummies-cheat-.html

Misleading headline

[Nursie]

It implies there was value in it in the first place.

Oh, you mean value for advertisers to report to their bosses how well they were doing because so many people 'like' their stuff. Seriously? That's the best metric you assholes have at the moment?

What's not clear from the article is what was in it for the fake or foreign accounts that 'like' things regardless - is this facebook pretending that advertising there works or is this third party likers with am unknown agenda?

friend of mine's brother does this

[davydagger]

A friend of mine's brother is in a start up company that does this for money. They call it advertising and they swear its just as legitimate as other types of ads. Not just facebook likes, but trying to farm various sorts of social media in attempt to "make things go viral". He told me he thinks that 60% of all trends are made up this way by some company like his. Oh, there are lots of companies that do this.

Like devalues itself

[Anonymous Coward]

"Like" has zero value in the absence of "Dislike".

So, how many fake FB accounts do you have?

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's start a random poll.

I have about 15. Only 3 are active outside of my real life account (two different FB games I play as time wasters). The others are alts I used for helping myself when playing games. Thank goodness there are people out there who've created scripts to automate the boring functions of the game.

If you told me I'd get free poker chips or a good weapon or maybe an upgrade for my ovens in Cafe World (yes I'm joking), I'd go like whatever page you wanted me to from as many accounts as need the help. If a bonus item is giftable, that means I'm clicking like 15 times and sending it across to the main account that plays that game.

My more successful alts (of the active ones) are women, they get more random friend requests (so random game items, free clicks when I want help in a game). Games on facebook want you to spam your "friends", so I created fake accounts and use those to spam the randoms who add my account because it has a sexy profile pic instead of hassling my real life account like they want me to.

I'd suggest a large number of people playing Zynga's Mafia Wars are fakes, energy accounts gathering loot to gift across to the main account. Their recent attempts at limiting automation/autoplayers are the reason why game numbers are way down. (They're also making stupid changes in the game and getting rid of real life people, which isn't helping).

I once posted "will cyber for loot" on my status and got a LOT of free stuff sent to me in Mafia Wars. That account has a profile pic that looks a lot like Amber Herd. (I figure I'm an honorary lesbian by borrowing a female persona, so why not.) I didn't follow through on the offer, I didn't need to - no-one even asked, they just sent me a whole bunch of stuff.

The attractive women profiles are handy if I want to find out about someone on facebook, say a real life person and I want to view more detail on their FB account. My real life account is totally disconnected from the fake accounts so I can safely send a friend request to every male in the target person's friends list and at least one will accept every time. This means I end up as a "friend of a friend" any many default security options in facebook allow friends of friends to see stuff that general users can't. Facebook are tightening up a little these days so that is less effective, or at least it was until timeline came in. If you don't manually go and modify your post history, some things are open to anyone.

Lastly - I was playing Zynga poker with one of my alts, got bored and flicked over to my real life FB account (which is game spam free, and recruiter friendly), then saw this posted on the slashdot facebook page in my newsfeed. I think that's irony but Alanis Morissette has me eternally confused about that.

Re:So, how many fake FB accounts do you have?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've easily setup a couple hundred sock puppet accounts. I use iMacros to login/out and perform tasks like clicking like or posting comments. It's useful for getting pages and conversations started and making them appear moderately popular. I do this with a half a dozen other people with a similar number of fake accounts. Total we have more than a 1000 fake accounts between us. I would assume the real number of fake accounts is 40-50%, if not higher.

Re:So, how many fake FB accounts do you have?

[pitchpipe]

Total we have more than a 1000 fake accounts between us.

And this my friends, is just one of the reasons why you'd have to be a total fucking nutjob to own FB. How do you know what the real numbers are?

way bigger problem

[slashmydots]

1,600 likes from fake people pales in comparison to 500,000 fake likes from real people for a drawing or giveaway. EVERYONE is now doing a like us on facebook, win a ______ giveaway deal. I bet Newegg and Tiger Direct got over a million likes during their repeated like-based giveaways. Yeah, I actually like Newegg but I don't much care for Tiger Direct quite the same. But for a free chance at a gaming computer, I'd like the hell out of them. That's a problem because any idiot can spot a fake profile easily but fake likes from real people devalue the whole system much worse.

Turnabout is fair play

[Rambo Tribble]

Facebook being devalued by users, even fake ones, is a refreshing change from Facebook characteristically devaluing users.

?huh?

[Charliemopps]

I was not aware that anyone placed any value in facebooks "like" system in the first place...

As a sidenote...

[jones_supa]

I've always been a bit uncomfortable to "Like" a company in Facebook. Paying for the particular company's products should be enough liking for them, no more cocksucking needed.

I don't get it

[whythefucknot]

I don't personally use FB, but my wife has a business with a heavily liked Facebook page. She has made the same observation about many of the likes coming from Egypt, Philippines, etc.

From what she's told me, when you "Like" something you can tell your friends, but you have to be friends with them anyway in which case you can already send them messages. Similarly, you can post on the company's page, but you can already do that without "Liking" it (and her page doesn't get very much spam - maybe one message every 2 days or so). So it doesn't sound as though liking things gives you any ability to send messages to people that you can't already send messages to. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

I'm very curious to know what motivation there could be for people to create fake accounts and "Like" things with them. It's ridiculous that the BBC article makes no attempt to even speculate on the obvious question.

Not just the Philippines

[arisvega]

The "civilized west" does this as well: this link (which I do not want you to click on, and I am only including it for reference) is from a copycat greek news site, with a 'catchy' domain name, where they inform you that if you 'like' their facebook profile you are "eligible to win the top Samsung smartphone priced at approximately [sic.] 670 euros". Their pages are full of sneakware/trackware as well.

Re:In essence people Egypt like stuff they know

[caution live frogs]

Fake FB accounts are set up and send friend requests to random users. Some FB users will accept any friend request they get. I know a few who do this. If a friend likes something, it shows up in your news feed (which is dumb, why do I care that you like a company?). If you click the link and then like it yourself, the company just gained access to your feed too. And your demographic info. Mission accomplished.

I see this all the time - so-and-so likes Target or Walmart or whatever. It makes me feel kinda bad for those people, because they don't realize how much personal info they give up when they click that little button. It's the same reason I never use FB to log in anywhere - if a site requires FB login only, I don't use it.