Facebook to act over bogus 'likes'

Facebook has vowed to stamp out fake “likes” being posted on its site on the eve of a Channel 4 Despatches report which claims Bangladeshi “click farms” are offering 1,000 likes for as little as a dollar.
The number of likes on Facebook has increased to 4.5 billion every day, and experts estimate the promotional value of a like to be over £100.
But according to the programme – “Celebs, brands and fake fans” – due to air tonight, rogue firms are hacking into users’ accounts to like pages their victims know nothing about.
The issue is not confined to Facebook, however, with YouTube also being caught out; even Coca-Cola has unwittingly been caught up in the scandal. The company has been forced to remove a video ad on YouTube featuring The Simpsons, which had attracted 6 million views, after the show exposed it had been hacked, too.
Legitimate marketing businesses exist to boost fans of pages, but there are also a number of illegal businesses trying to make money from bogus likes.
Richard Baxter, managing director of SEO Gadget, told the programme: “Unfortunately I think there are probably as many people involved in the illegitimate side of this kind of marketing, as there are in the legitimate side of marketing. This is a serious industry.
“There’ are a lot of people doing it, people are making livings from it – it’s a very tangible thing that’s happening.”
Facebook claims that it checks over 25 billion actions every day for spam and fake profiles – and that Facebook does not permit the buying and selling of likes.
A spokesman said: “A like that doesn’t come from someone truly interested in connecting with the brand benefits no one. If you run a Facebook page and someone offers you a boost in your fan count in return for money, our advice is to walk away – not least because it is against our rules and there is a good chance those likes will be deleted by our automatic systems.
“We investigate and monitor ‘like-vendors’ and if we find that they are selling fake likes, or generating conversations from fake profiles, we will quickly block them from our platform.”
The issue has been raised before; last year the BBC set up a spoof firm and found many of “likes” it received were from bogus visitors. During the first 24 hours of advertising Virtual Bagel got over 1,600 likes, a figure which had reached 3,000 by the time the video report was filmed. All for an advertising spend of just over £30.
At the time, Facebook claimed the lack of interest by the UK and US audience and the multitude of likes from East Asia teens were due to poor targeting.

Facebook to act over bogus ‘likes’

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