Since companies and individuals began using Facebook to promote their work, clicking "like" has meant more than a personal endorsement by a particular user, but a method by which to build a business. More recently, "liking" can sometimes become the first step in a larger scam, CNN reported.
Typically, scammers set up fake pages and post items that literally and figuratively beg for "likes," such as "like this for Jesus" or a picture of a child with cancer (which they steal from actual pages of children with cancer). If the pitch works, they'll generate enough likes on their page so that it's more likely to display on users' news feed, as per Facebook's algorithms. At that point, the page becomes an asset, either in a sale or as a platform to endorse an actual product.
"The more likes and shares and comments and that sort of thing you have, the more likely it is to be seen by other people," Tim Senft, founder of Facecrooks.com, a site that tracks scams on Facebook, told CNN. "If they're looking to sell the page in a black-hat forum somewhere, that's what the value of the page is."
Other times, the con artist is simply a straight evil doer, and uses a page saturated in likes to spread malware and infect users' computers.
Most Facebook devotees aren't aware of the scam, even if they tend to be suspicious of pages with seemingly no other purpose than to acquire your like. Thus, they'll click their endorsement anyway based on the outside chance it's actually doing some good.
"The average user doesn't know any better," Senft said. "I think their common sense tells them it's not true, but in the back of their minds, they think 'What if it is true? What does it hurt if I press like?' or whatever."
"If it sounds too good to be true, don't click on it," Senft advised. "If it's something that's obviously geared toward tugging on the heartstrings, check it out first."
Actually, some people are starting to take that approach, according to a Facebook spokesperson. Sort of like those spam emails with the grave misspellings, people are beginning to suspect at least lower quality content behind posts whose only purpose is to generate likes.
"People have told us they associate requests to like or share a post with lower quality content, and receiving that type of feedback helps us adjust our systems to get better at showing more high quality posts," the Facebook spokesperson said via e-mail. "If you see a post that's low quality and seems to be focused only on gaining traffic, hover over the top-right corner of the post and click the arrow to report it."
Called "one of Facebook's most valuable brand assets," by the company's product manager, Ling Bao, the button has shown its darker side. In my feed, I've had posts from Paul Walker's "brother" suspiciously soliciting likes. At the time (not knowing any better), I was disgusted by Walker's brother trading off his brother's death. Now, I know that it was just some internet scammer building a page for dubious purposes.
