From Pine View Farm

Facebook Frolics 4

Like, no likes, dude. OhMyGov! reports on, like, like botnets:

“Spammers and malware authors can mass produce false Facebook profiles to help them spread dangerous links and spam, and trick people into befriending them” Sophos’ Graham Cluley told the BBC.

According to Cluley, most suspect accounts are usually run by a single person operating thousands of profiles via specialized computer software. Most of the fake accounts appear to come from the Middle East and the Pacific Rim.

For corporations, the revelation that most of their social media fans don’t exist may mean a redesign of their social media strategy with more sophisticated media analytics. For government agencies like the U.S. Department of State and Defense–the notion the citizens they serve may also be fake poses a problem for agencies that measure success based on only Facebook.

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4 comments

  1. George Smith

    July 20, 2012 at 4:09 pm

    The same phenom exists on Twitter. Every week I get a msg that someone new is following me and I’ll have a look. It will be some senseless spam account having nothing to do with my interests, just someone trying to accumulate reciprocal followers. Invariably, if you haven’t ‘followed’ them after 24 hours they silently unfollow you. If you’re stupid enough to ‘follow’ them they quietly ‘unfollow’ you anyway because all they’re really interested in is getting shortened spam links and ads into your feed.

     
  2. Frank

    July 20, 2012 at 4:11 pm

    Why am I not surprised?

    It’s all about the Google juice.

     
  3. George Smith

    July 20, 2012 at 6:28 pm

    I’m convinced Google has been beaten by evil, mostly because of its own success. Most of its search seems poisoned by either trivial, idiosyncratic or plainly commercial links. Why something Huffington Post is always at the top is ridiculous. Same with Wikipedia. You could write a book on how they devised a system that worked for awhile but now that everything is completely monetized is slowly sliding into total garbage. Paradoxically, non-fiction old fashion library texts provide increasing value. 

     
  4. From Pine View Farm » Blog's archive » Twits on Twitter

    July 22, 2012 at 7:38 am

    […] Smith’s experience leads him to believe so. See his comment here.) July 22, 2012 | Posted by: Frank | Posted in: Political Theatre | Bookmark this post […]