Facebook Working To Weed Out Fake Likes

jfruh writes In the early days of brands on Facebook, it was crucial for companies to garner as many "likes" as possible to boost their image, and that led to some unethical businesses selling likes that came from fake accounts. Now Facebook is informing brands that they're working to root out fake likes, leaving like counts lower but realer. Now if only I could get my relatives to stop clicking on pictures that say they like puppies and are against cancer.

fuck off facebook

[shione]

They are not going to get very far weeding out fake likes when their system is set up to bribe people for likes.

What facebook needs to do is add a dislike button like youtube has.

If I want to comment on my local government's facebook page to complain about something why the fuck do I have to LIKE them first.

Secondly facebook should crack down on companies asking for likes to enter competitions or get discount coupons at their shop.

Re:

[darkain]

It's called moderators points... which I just lost my chance to use by leaving a comment. :P One or the other, maybe Facebook should use that system, too!?

Re: fuck facebook

[Anonymous Coward]

I had a legitimate business page with real likes, and after about a year they shut my page down without explanation.

Re:

[ayesnymous]

What facebook needs to do is add a dislike button like youtube has.

Youtube changed their comment system so that if you click dislike, nothing happens. It doesn't decrement the number of thumbs up anymore.

If I want to comment on my local government's facebook page to complain about something why the fuck do I have to LIKE them first.

I've commented on FB pages without liking them. Not sure if they changed that recently.

Realer?

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps you should first find realer words than "realer". Like "more reliable"? Or "more realistic"?

Re:Realer?

[mwvdlee]

I agree, there is nothing annoyinger than imaginary words.

Re:

[crashumbc]

But imaginary numbers are ok?

Re:

[danomac]

Of course! See the government's "balanced" budget that keeps putting us in debt!

Re:

[StikyPad]

If you think that's an imaginary word, you should see

Re:

[oodaloop]

Realer is a perfectly cromulent word.

Let's test it!

[penguinoid]

If you like this new initiative, click "like" on the post announcing it. Also do so if you don't like the new initiative.

Re:

[Z00L00K]

Facebook is just a pool for the exhibitionists.

Dishonest motherfuckers!

[Anonymous Coward]

I love cancer and hate puppies. Best possible scenario is when puppies get cancer. Serves them right.

It's slightly more complicated

[Required Snark]

Facebook want to eliminate fake "likes" that don't generate revenue.

They're fine with fake anything that helps their bottom line.

And fake accounts

[NixieBunny]

I am admin for a good-sized group (>1000 fans). We see about a 50-50 mix of real humans and fake accounts requesting to join the group. Curiously, the fake ones have similar structure: Photo of a lovely young Asian lady, and a weird name, and male sex.

Yeah right

[QuantumPion]

Fake likes is Facebook's entire business model. Getting rid of fake likes would be like McDonalds saying they are going to get rid of unhealthy food.

Excellent youtube video describing the problem with Facebook's commercialized likes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVfHeWTKjag [youtube.com]

Re:Yeah right

[SuricouRaven]

They just want to get rid of fake fake likes, because they devalue their real fake likes.

Re:

[TheRaven64]

Fake likes are ones where the recipient didn't pay Facebook for them.

Do something good for a change!

[dohzer]

Give me a 'dislike' button already!

Nothing has changed

[DerekLyons]

From TFS: "In the early days of brands on Facebook, it was crucial for companies to garner as many "likes" as possible to boost their image".

It's still like that, except with individual posts rather than pages. If a post doesn't get enough 'likes', 90% of the people following that page will never see it unless they've gone to the trouble of turning notifications on or the page owner has ponied up the bucks to 'boost' the page.

Fake

[jargonburn]

I'd settle for them blocking fake friends! :S

Lots of fake likes

[future assassin]

I've been running an ad for my business page and have gotten 100 likes in the last three days from my ad. Problem is people like me ad not by business so in reality I'm just buying like for the sake of likes.

Re:

[future assassin]

meh bad spelling too much beer.

Wish it was smarter about hiding content types

[swb]

I wish it was somehow smarter about hiding categories of content.

My neighbor frequently shares pages/people's posts about New Agey kinds of food topics -- "10 reasons why boiled kale improves your aura". I use the "Hide all from Melanie Stargazer" option to block it, but there doesn't seem to be a way to train Facebook to block other similar pages/content types.

My guess is many of these shares are from people trying to make a career out of being digital holistic gurus of some kind and pay Facebook to promote their posts. But I wish I could train it to identify this category of post and just never see it again.

I also feel like I've blocked countless radio station shares, which must also be paying to promote their content. But I don't want to see clickbait from "101.3 The Wave" or any other station I've never heard of.

Still another is the mass tag shared post, often from an organization/entity -- "Foo Bar with Manny Smith and 47 others". I'm pretty sure the mass tagging is done to develop maximum exposure, but it seems to abuse the putative social intent of tagging a post as identifying people actually with the poster.

Yet another annoyance is the phenomenon of people posting replies that contain ONLY people's names as tags. Occasionally I want to see the comments to a post, but often the majority are just name tagging. There should be a way to hide those so that only the people tagged and/or their friends (depending on security settings) see them.

Re:

[Pascoea]

I really wish Facebook had a regex filter. Would be a double win, I'd finally have an excuse to learn how to use regex, and eventually I'd stop seeing "Jimmy sticks his dick in a toaster, you'll never believe what happens next" type shit in my feed.

Add in the regex filter, a "dislike" button, and a paid level of service that gets rid of game requests and leaves my god damn feed on "most recent" and I'll be a happy camper.

Re:

[swb]

I imagine Facebook will eventually eliminate "Most Recent" as an option -- they really want to structure the feed like a TV channel, with content you want from your friends interspersed with a bunch of paid promotion junk content you can't avoid.

They don't even seem to respect "I don't want to see this..." now -- I have blocked "Timehop" (really, your post was dumb the first time around, it's no better 3 years later) a dozen times and it keeps showing up.

Oh!

[Greyfox]

I was just watching a video [youtube.com] about this the other day. Dude explains that fake like fraudsters also tend to like facebook-promoted content to try to throw the fraud-detection algorithms off. Ultimately either method of promotion makes it harder for him to connect with people who are actually interested in his channel.

Born Under a Bad Sign

[StikyPad]

Damnit, Facebook. If it wasn't for fake likes, I wouldn't have no likes at all.

Short-term solution that won't work.

[Last_Available_Usern]

This will only really work for the accounts that have no activity other than liking one thing (or one person's set of things). As soon as the fake accounts are managed to like a bunch of other random things in addition to the page in question Facebook will be right back where it started.

There are two way to get fake likes

[GuB-42]

How to get fake likes :
- Pay a bunch of people in China or India to click on the "like" button.
- Pay Facebook to encourage a bunch of people in China or India to click on the "like" button.

Facebook wants to penalize people who use the first option. Fake likes are OK as long as Facebook get their share.