Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
Oh, and hi from the Philippines! :) We have a very liking culture over here.
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?
So if I understand this correctly, they're saying that some of the people on Facebook are real?
"Like" has zero value in the absence of "Dislike".
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.